Compare AND/OR gates to series and parallel circuits, respectively, to connect electrical engineering and computer programming.
Establish a gallery of current and past projects to motivate students and to build community as students get to show off their work.
Have students create a digital story in Scratch about an interesting scientific phenomenon as a final project to teach them both computer programming and science literacy.
Introduce young students to degrees, decimals, and percentages so that they can use turn and sound blocks in Scratch.
Teach students how the xy-coordinate system works before having them use motion blocks in Scratch so they don’t get confused by positive and negative numbers.
Have students implement simple filters on sound objects so they can parse strings of notes into recognizable melodies to get practice manipulating strings.
Have students create a program in Python that draws a map of the stars in order to gain practice using dictionaries to manipulate real data.
Have students implement a rotating substitution cipher in Java that encrypts and decrypts strings in an assignment that gives them practice manipulating strings in a real-world context.
Design class activities that incorporate a student's local knowledge with specific computer science content and practices to enable engagement in deep learning.
Introduce the playnote block in Scratch by having students experiment with different arguments for the block and creating melodies.