The third graders finished their second set of game programming lessons this week.  Over all it went well.  They’re comfortable enough with the Scratch interface toh create their own animations and games.  One of the students works on projects at home when her computer isn’t busted.  I talked them through creating pong while a couple second graders built play doh models for claymation.  They were able to figure everything out except the angles requires to turn the ball around.

The third graders might be burning out on programming for the time being.  They were very distracted with the second graders claymation, so I’m going to rotate out the second graders for a couple weeks to let the third graders work on claymation.  Next time I have them working with Scratch, I’ll try to get them to make a game of their own design.  They haven’t been too good with debugging or multi-sprite projects, but they’re finally at point where they can do medium sized projects.  The drawing mechanism is frustrating to them.  Using their fingers on a SMART board might do the trick.  In the mean time, I’ll let them work in 3D using clay.