Integrating Coding in the Classroom - Coding the Nutcracker

Our music teacher obtained grants to take the entire 2nd grade district-wide to see the Nutcracker.  We worked together to prepare our students for what they would see on the stage (see my last post).  Following the field trip, students wrote about their favorite part of the ballet.  One teacher decided to take her students' writing one step farther and venture into an unknown world to her - computer programming.  Together, we had these 2nd graders code their experience.  Within an hour and a half these 2nd grade students who had never used Scratch Jr before had created scenes from the Nutcracker like this battle scene with the Nutcracker and the Mouse King.

I was coding with my 2nd graders during Library time and giving them choices for coding activities.  However, I decided to use my limited time wisely with this particular class and use our time to get familiar with Scratch Jr (a program they had never used before).

Day 1: We learned how to use Scratch Jr and create a background, a character, and move the character.  (This was more of a free-play activity, not requiring them to use their Nutcracker scene).

Meanwhile, in the classroom students wrote and drew about their favorite part of the Nutcracker.

Day 2: We learned how to code multiple characters and make them move simultaneously with the green flag button.  The goal for the day was to identify an appropriate background and characters.  The classroom teacher and I prefaced this work session by explaining that we would have to be "flexible" in choosing both, as we might not see exactly what we needed.  I loved how students got to work fashioning their own swords with the drawing tools and adapting existing characters.  (Originally the classroom teacher and I thought we would have them create 3 scenes that would tell the story of their favorite part of the story but scaled this back to just one, as they had so many new tools to maneuver and we didn't want to overwhelm them).

Day 3: Our final day did not get off to a very good start.  We discovered that over half of the work that was done only days before was GONE!  We began this class by saving each student's work.  I showed students how to resize and how to make things grow and shrink. Now that we were back up and running students were ready to put the finishing touches on their animations.   

The tree grows

 

Battle scene with homemade swords

Clara throws her shoe (a basketball)

Snow scene

 

Russian Trepak

The Sugar Plum Fairy

The only disappointment with this project was in our inability to save projects.  The classroom teacher wanted to share these with the whole class and while I tried emailing the projects, they would only work on a device that had the app installed.  I discovered that we didn't have a way to share these from our iPads to a desktop computer so I went a bit old-school and simply had each child play me their scene and I recorded it on my iPad.  Perfect?  No, but the students could see each other's work on the SmartBoard and these could then be e-mailed home.

My takeaways: While it was challenging to teach such a robust program to 2nd graders in a short time, I was impressed with their investment to this project.  They were happy to experiment on their own and "see what would happen" when they tried new tools.  It was wonderful seeing the creativity flow from our most challenged students.  When they did not see exactly what they needed they either settled on something close or created it themselves.  I can't wait to share this with other teachers and grow some interest in integrating coding in our curriculum.