These are my notes from the “Scratch for High School” session at the 2016 FETC conference. I did not take very good notes because I was working in Scratch at the same time.
Presenter
- Patrick Cullinane from The Benjamin School
- Scratch web site
Pen Tool
- Pen = used to draw paths on the screen.
- One of the first lessons is to draw basic shapes like a square.

Creating Interactivity
- Kids have assignment to write a program with 20 questions.
- Uses variables and sending/receiving message.

Brick Breaker Game
- When key pressed as an event is slow. Use an if statement instead.



Math Based Programs
- He showed how to make a new block, which is like defining a custom method.

Questions and Answers
- Do you teach any conventions like how to organize code blocks on screen?
- You can zoom in and out.
- You can right-click and select “Clean up”.
- You can right-click on block to add a comment, which can be expanded and collapsed.
- How do kids make transition to other coding languages?
- He has students do the same program first in Scratch, then Python, and then finally Java.
Student Examples
- He has students do a project where they calculate density by looping through 2 arrays of values.
- Student did a project where the user could move a putter to hit a ball, which moved with accurate and realistic velocity and angle.
- He showed a student project that drew fractals.
- A student made a Street Fighter game where each sprite had 100 costumes.
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