Tell young students that computer programming is simply writing rules for a computer to follow, similar to bossing around a younger sibling, to help them connect programming to everyday life.
Misconception: Students forget that without instructions, other users won’t know how to correctly run their code in Scratch.
Misconception: Students get frustrated when they try to point their character to the left and it ends up flipped upside down because they don’t understand how changing the direction a sprite faces works in Scratch.
Explicitly show students how to login to Scratch because not all students have the same level of computer literacy.
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.
Misconception: Students think the positioning of scripts within the script area in Scratch influences the order in which they are executed.
Misconception: Students have difficulty transitioning from working with one sprite to multiple sprites in Scratch.
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.
Misconception: Student think costumes are outfits rather than the overall appearance of a sprite in Scratch.