General Education Activity | STEM Career Connection: Programmer
Believe it or not, football plays have a lot in common with coding! This activity encourages students to explore algorithms using the popular Scratch coding language, developed by the MIT Media Lab.
Suggested Materials:
Technology access
Predict:
In what ways can football plays be similar to programming or coding?
Just like coaches give their players a list of steps, or an algorithm, to complete a play, coders put blocks together to make a list of steps for the Scratch program. What do you think an algorithm in Scratch might look like? What do you think you could do with these algorithms?
Plan:
Ask your students what they already know about Scratch. What prior knowledge or skills do you use while working in Scratch?
Show students the Scratch Game. Talk about what is happening that might be the result of an algorithm.
Click on each Sprite and point out the coding blocks to the students.
Have students share strategies for determining what the different sets of coding blocks do.
Play:
Direct students to the Scratch Game (or bit.ly/3pxnSAD).
Open the Scratch game and click “See inside.” This will bring you to the code of the game.
Have students write down their observations of the different scripts.
What do all the scripts start with? What is similar between scripts? What is different?
When you click on one of the scripts, what happens in the stage?
Click on different sprites (in the sprite plane in the bottom right corner of the screen) to show how different sprites have to be scripted. What similarities and differences do you notice between the scripts of different sprites?
Ponder:
What patterns did you notice in the code of the scratch game linked above?
What challenges did you encounter while exploring the code? How did you overcome them?
What could you create in Scratch?
Extension:
Have students explore Scratch by creating their own account. They can access Scratch (www.scratch.mit.edu) by either using an email address to create a free personal account (they can access this kind of account outside of school), or by logging in to a school account that is connected to your class. (Follow the tutorial to create a class account.) If students have minimal experience with Scratch, the Scratch tutorials are a great way to get students some background. Students should start with “Getting Started,” and then choose tutorials based on their interests.
Students can play the Scratch game without creating an account. However, they will not be able to code their own projects.
If your students are starting to feel comfortable with Scratch or have the previous experience to do so, have them remix the Scratch Gamelinked above.
Students can remix games by clicking the green “Remix” button.
Ideas to remix:
Change the sprites’ costumes to make them football themed.
Change what sprites say when they collide.
Add another, more difficult level.
