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In the run up to Computer Science Education Week (8th to 14th December), I delivered a Scratch training session for  my teaching colleagues.   As they do not normally  teach computing, I wanted to give them an idea of what Computer Science is all about and explore some ways that programming concepts could be incorporated into lessons.  Scratch is a good application to start with, as it has an intuitive graphical interface and is one of the main tools that we use in computing lessons to teach children how to code.

I decided that the best way to demonstrate the benefits of a tool like Scratch for use in the classroom would be to demonstrate how a basic program such as a quiz game could easily be created, and then used in a lesson.  As the process to build a quiz game can be quite time-consuming though, I provided everyone with the final Scratch file in which to change the visual elements and edit the code.  We then went to work using the Scratch program as a template to customise and build our own purpose-built quiz games for use in the classroom.

For those who might be interested, I have also made this two-part video (below) to show how a quiz game can be built from start to finish in Scratch.  The quiz game itself covers the main programming techniques and knowledge required for the Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 Computing curriculum.  This includes creating a programming sequence (from design to code), selections (conditional if statements), repetition (repeat and forever loops), variables (strings and lists) and the inputs and outputs.

The final game can be played online here: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/37950462/#fullscreen