This Scratch lesson is perfect for teachers introducing coding to students! This PowerPoint guides students through the creative process of animating the letters of their names. By write their own scripts, students will experiment with forever loops, conditional loops, and repeat loops. There are opportunities for advanced students to take their work to the next level, too.

The slides are created to align with best-practices of instructional design:

• An engaging task description to foster curiosity.
• Clear learning intentions for focused outcomes.
• A quick explainer video
• Step-by-step guided learning where students are trained to use plain English to describe code and predict what it will do
• Opportunities for self-directed application, allowing students to explore concepts at their own pace.
• Challenges that offer differentiated learning paths to accommodate all skill levels.
• A thoughtful reflection protocol (What? So What? Now What?) to connect learning intentions with outcomes, alongside a rubric for self-assessment.

Students love this lesson... At the end, they will feel inspired to tackle more complex coding concepts. Teachers, too, will discover numerous ways to tailor this lesson to fit their classroom's needs, even those who may feel less confident in teaching coding or computational thinking.

This is a quick 'win' for students and teachers! While it is designed to be completed in one class, students often prefer to have at least two classes to experiment with code.