Coding on Scratch

 We live in Issaquah, Washington.  It's home to Microsoft, Amazon, and Space X.  All around me I find people who work in the computer industry, many of whom code in some capacity.  My students hear mom and dad talk about coding, the latest round of lay offs at Microsoft, see mom and dad work until late at night and push to develop the latest update.  They are around computers, computer science, robotics and engineering daily.

We embrace the coding and work to have the kids figure out ways to integrate it into their learning.  One of the platforms we use is called Scratch and it's a program that was developed by MIT a while back.  Students can code video games, videos, informational platforms and use simple blocks to learn so much.  

The beautiful part about coding is that it fits well into a growth mindset, as students often make mistakes while coding, have to debug their ideas, learn from others and even research ways to get around their problems on the computer.  My students learn at a rapid pace and also are available to help others.  Scratch translates well to coding robotics later- we use EV3s, Microbits, and also Lego WeDo kits with other block coding programs.

Today I watched as a class of 8 and 9 year olds were transfixed and enchanted as they watched witches glide across the screen, build mazes, and try and retry calculators that were built by the scratch platform.  

I am going to develop some lesson plans around scratch and math at some point.  Any ideas around how I can integrate the two components?