Learning Scratch is a milestone of building a strong foundation of coding, by switching from coding with picture-based blocks to code-based blocks which are much similar to the real world of coding. Through creation, realization, integration & development, students do not only learn coding in a happy and relaxing way, but, even more importantly, also achieve all-rounded self-development.

Children are born with unlimited creativity, but unfortunately already being suppressed or discouraged under the traditional way of learning. During the programming process with Scratch, students can create anything their imagination takes them. They have to design their own project from scratch, just like drawing on a blank sheet, they can pick any material to use, any things to draw, any colour to fill, simply everything. So this is the best platform for children to unleash their creativity by realizing and visualizing their ideas in mind by coding.

When the students have the basic ideas of their creations, it is time to realize them by the programming languages. This is the most difficult part while it is also the main reason for learning to code. Because after drafting the programming codes, they have to test out themselves if they really work? Is there any bug? Is the “product” same as what it is expected? In most of the time, our young coders have to go though rounds of debugging and repeated attempts, before their ideal inventions come real in front of them.

Scratch is one of the best tools for STEM education because it integrates knowledge from several aspects, so students are not purely learning to write programming codes. They will also touch on mathematics, such as coordination, numbers comparison, angles & geometry, variables, etc, definitely an essential foundation for further studies. We have also included some basic sciences into our Scratch course, for example the concept of gravity, in order to learn the scientific principles behind daily-life phenomena.

In our Scratch course, we always encourage students to keep trying and not to afraid of failures. It is no simple or guaranteed formula in coding; students do not always get what they expect from what they code. By seeking advices from tutors and their fellow classmates, they learn to accept feedbacks and to improve themselves. Scratch also offers a public project sharing platform where they can upload their own projects, learn from and be inspired by others’ projects in order to further breakthrough their innovation and creativity.

Course Content

Scratch is a very important foundation for one’s journey in learning to code. In the Scratch programming application, Students have to drag the code-blocks, arrange them in correct sequences, and handle different conditions and loops, in order to produce a complete program. The capacity for innovation is close to unlimited with Scratch, which can be used to create all sorts of different programs, games or animations. Therefore we encourage our students to embrace their creativity and imagination, and come up with a unique project of their own.

Final Project

Before completion of the course, it is time for each student to consolidate what they have learnt, enhanced with their creativity, and produce a unique project of their own. During the very last lesson, each of them will become a public speaker, presenting and demonstrating their own interesting stories in front of the tutor and their classmates.

What will you get after completing the course?

• Clipped video of final project presentation
• Overall learning evaluation report
• Tutor’s comments and recommendations
• Course-completion certificate

Level 1

Level 1 of this course focuses on the basic coding blocks, to make sure the students understand thoroughly the concepts and uses of them, as an important foundation before moving forward. We will teach different coding theories in each session through theme-based learning, and they shall practice by applying the specific theory in designing their project on that session. To mark a completion for Level 1, the students have to consolidate all that they have learnt and creatively apply them in a mid-course final project – a complete mini game. We stimulate active learning by the students, where they should plan and design on each and every details of the game.

Level 2

Level 2 is an eye-opening one for the students to discover the boundless possibilities of creation with the use of coding and STEM knowledge. They will apply more advanced mathematical skills, such as numbers comparison and angles of polygons, to create more practical programs. Course content in this level is more target-driven: the students learn the rationales behind programming codes by producing a series of mini-games under the tutor’s guidance. We believe that bringing coding to the gaming world will make it a much interesting learning process.

Level 3

We will then proceed to a much advanced level of coding in Level 3. Our students shall further breakthrough their creativity and coding ability to design more players and more levels for their invented games. These practices will bring the students to another learning level in the computer programming journey. Furthermore, we will also teach some more advanced concepts like creating a variable or a list, to make coding even more diversify and limitless, so that the creations by our young coders can be as “imaginary” as they can.

Level 4

As the learning progress starting from level 4 will be more challenging and in order for the students to catch up with it, we have to make sure they have fully grasped all the basic knowledge and skills taught in the first 3 levels. Therefore, all of them have to pass an assessment upon completing level 3, before they are qualified to advance their learning journey to the next one. There will be a lot more mathematical elements in level 4, at the same time of mastering more complicated programming concepts. Not only out-of-the-box thinking and coding skills are essential, the students also have to apply arithmetic logics in order complete the programming projects with desired results. Moreover, students at this level will start to try coding platform games with more characters, such as the classical “Super Mario”. The programming will involve handling of the movements and variations of multiple characters, which is much more complicated than those coding tasks in the previous 3 levels, that demands clear and definite logical thinking.

Level 5

Being the last level of this course, students are expected to have well mastered most of the coding techniques by then. In level 5, we will apply the state-of-the-art technology, artificial intelligence (AI), in our teaching. Introducing the rule-based system, an important concept in computer science, our students would be able to figure out the rules written at the back of a known program or game. One of the highlighted classroom tasks would be coding for a computer to play tic-tac-toe with a player. In this common game, for example, there are 8 ways to win, and the chance for one who places first in the middle square to win a game would be 4. These are the principles that have to be known before one can really design to code for the game. In conclusion, lessons in level 5 would not only help to reinforce the coding knowledge that have been learnt, but also learn to make use of related reactive data and rules in coding, just as how AI works. This shall lead our students to the entire new page of coding.

Scratch helps to build a strong foundation for learning to code in the future. After they complete the 5 levels of the course, we will give personalized recommendation and arrangement regarding their next step for more advanced courses.