Learning Opportunities

Target Audience: Grade 4-6 (Grade 7/8 welcome too!) teachers, pre-service teachers and educational assistants encouraged to attend.

The new Science Curriculum brings Computer Science and Computational Thinking to the fore. This provides an opportunity for our students to design and build computational artifacts, including through visual block-based languages. 

Scratch is a visual programming language which can be easily introduced in the classroom to help students develop skills in computational thinking. This course is designed to empower educators with the knowledge and skills to integrate Scratch into their teaching practices. 

The course is offered at two levels - Level 1 (Beginner), designed for those who have never used Scratch before; and Level 2 (Elevate), designed for those familiar with Scratch but would like to dive deeper into learning sample programs that can be brought into the classroom. Click here to sign up for Level 2.

You may choose to register for either or both depending on your familiarity with Scratch Programming.

Level 1 (Beginner): 

• Introduction to the fundamentals of Computational Thinking in the classroom. What is computational thinking? What are algorithms? We’ll share some practical examples that can be used in the classroom to help students understand these concepts.
• Introduction to Scratch interface for visual block-based programming, including an overview of Scratch interface and functionality, hands-on exercises to create simple Scratch projects, understanding basic coding concepts such as loops, conditionals, and variables in Scratch.