By: Claire & Michael

For our inquiry we looked at how Scratch might be used in a cross curricular learning activity for digital storytelling in a secondary english classroom. In the hopes of showing how both storytelling and programming can be used to teach students valuable skills and enrich the process. To do this, we have outlined a basic lesson concept that goes over how we would in theory use Scratch in an english classroom, however, we would like to note that this concept could easily be adapted for other subjects.

About Scratch

Scratch is a tool for building computational thinking and programming skills through an easy to use web based interface. Scratch has a fairly low barrier to entry and it has been around since 2007, with lots of resources available online for teachers and users. Users do have to create an account in order to save and download their work, but if they just want to check it out and play around, no account is necessary. Learners snap together predefined blocks and create fairly sophisticated programs in a visual way. Scratch has multiple applications and can be used for storytelling, basic programming, creating video games, graphic design and more. To get a better idea of what some of the different applications that Scratch can be used for, I would highly recommend checking out some of the helpful tutorials they have available. 

About Storytelling 

Storytelling has been a practice done around the world as a form of communication since time immemorial. Drawing on First Peoples principles, “learning is embedded in memory, history, and story.” (Teacher Education Program Competency Guide). Jo-Anne Chrona, outlines the benefits of using story as a teaching tool in her comprehensive guide on First Peoples Principles of Learning (FPPL). Here is the list of potential benefits of utilizing story in the classroom. For more information on FPPL and teaching, check out her guide here. 

Implications for Classroom and School Include (By Jo-Anne Chrona):

  • Using story and narrative to teach across curricular areas.
  • Providing learners with opportunities to share their stories, and their voices.
  • Understanding the oral tradition, as well as its value and legal implications in Canada.
  • Providing learners with the opportunities to listen to and connect with the stories of others.
  • Understanding that all education systems are constructs based on specific sets of cultural values; what is considered important to learn is based on sets of the cultural values in a particular context, including the place (land) where the learning occurs.
  • Thinking critically about what we consider important for students to learn and about how we choose to structure their learning experiences.

Lesson Concept: 

For our theoretical lesson, students will be creating a short story that will express a narrative they’ve created through text, visuals, animation, sound and/or music. Scratch is a rich platform for storytelling and allows mixing and matching many forms of multimedia, as well as providing opportunities for interactivity and sharing.

We’ve created a quick getting started walk through of our own that covers the basics of creating, building and sharing a first project:

After developing a basic understanding of the Scratch’s capabilities, learners will shift their focus offline to developing their stories. Storyboarding sheets are provided to to help students work through the different dimensions of their narratives:

storyboard thumbnail

Now that students have created their storyboards, they are ready to start beginning it to life on Scratch. As an example, we created a basic example story for the students. Which can be shown at the beginning of the class as a hook or at this stage as an example of a ‘finished product’. For our Scratch story, we created an animated story of the first two acts from Romeo & Juliet, a well known story.

Link: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/458704014

Considerations

Here are some of the pros, cons and considerations we identified in the course of our inquiry:

  • Like any new tool or technology, Scratch does have an upfront learning curve for both teachers and students. While it does develop worthwhile technology literacy and computational thinking skills, these learning objectives will need to be balanced with competencies in english.
  • Following from the previous point, various levels of familiarity with scratch, programming or technology in general may raise equity concerns.
  • Scratch can be used fully in the browser without downloading software or creating an account. Work can be loaded and saved to the local computer. That being said, if there’s a desire to share work with the class, for example by embedding projects on a course website or elsewhere, creation of an account is required. Additionally, Scratch only allows projects to be shared publicly, or not at all which may present privacy concerns. Especially in a storytelling context, students may wish to include personal details or identifying information. Best practice is to consult with your EdTech coordinator before proceeding.
  • Scratch scores highly on the SAMR model, enabling new tasks and learning activities that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.

Resources

Scratch Cross-Curricular Integration Guide
http://scratched.gse.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/scratch_crosscurricular_integration_guide_0.pdf

Common Sense Education: How to Use Scratch for Digital Storytelling
https://www.commonsense.org/education/articles/how-to-use-scratch-for-digital-storytelling

Learn from Scratch: Language Arts and Scratch
https://sites.google.com/site/learnfromscratch/home/integrating-scratch-in-the-curriculum/language-arts-and-scratch

Scratch
https://scratch.mit.edu/ideas 

First Peoples Principles of Learning: Jo-Anne Chrona
https://firstpeoplesprinciplesoflearning.wordpress.com/

Teacher Education Program Competency Guide
http://teachered.ca/