Title

Writing Curriculum with SCRATCH

Time
&
Collaboration

During Summer 2013, I participated in several working sessions for the Office of
Instructional Technology. The opportunity provided two weeks to collaborate with
other educators in order to develop a scope, sequence, and online curriculum for
learning the programming software SCRATCH.

The Instructional Programming workshop included of five Baltimore County liaison
teachers for the curriculum writing position. Although these working sessions involved
a collaborative process; lessons were assigned individually. We each worked on two
separate lessons that aligned with technology and common core standards. Lessons
were developed using a digital platform that would be accessed by both students and
instructional technology teachers.

Teachers struggle to invest the time and energy necessary to design rigorous lessons
that not only meet learners needs and curricular demands, but also prepare students
for 21st century skills. The real challenge for educators, then, is to provide learning
opportunities in the general-education curriculum that are inclusive and effective for
all students (Ralabate, 2011, p. 15). So, as a curriculum writer, I used research-based
methods whenever possible to increase the effectiveness of the lessons.

Content
&
Description

My artifact is based upon a professional development/job opportunity as a curriculum
writer in the 553 Instructional Technology Introduction to Programming Grades 3-5
BCPS workshop.

The two lessons I created were written in Microsoft Word, in a SCRATCH Project
Guide Template created by my employer. Research was done using Internet Explorer
on both a desktop and laptop simultaneously. The lessons consisted of programs that I
created through the SCRATCH software to facilitate investigating and programming
skills such as parallelism.

Justification
&
Reflection
The software allowed me to employ STEM skills in real-world applications to provide
students with learning opportunities in cross-curricular content. Designing and
assessing this curricular-related instructional activity helps promote deeper
understanding of content, inquiry, problem solving, and collaboration. The instructional
design and content using SCRATCH software embodies 21st century skills and content,
as well as technology literacy in students, teachers, and curriculum writers.

Engagement is imperative to learning because it enhances internal motivation, critical
thinking, and the investment between students and teachers needed for rigorous
learning. Teachers need to think about how to make the content in the curriculum
meaningful to the learners while also providing opportunities to innovate and develop
critical thinking skills for students. Students should be given a plethora of activities
and methods to foster thinking and creativity, which in turn self-motivates.

SCRATCH promotes innovation and critical thinking by exploring and solving real-world
problems in a digital environment. This is the working definition of ISTE-T Standard 1.