Teaching kids maths, programming and science with

Scratch

(A personal experience)

Alexander Belyaev

Institute of Sensors, Signals & Systems

What is Scratch ?

Scratch is a free visual programming language developed by MIT Media Lab people.

By dragging and dropping coloured blocks, you can create games, animations, interactive stories, and simple (and no so simple) scientific simulations.

To start programming in Scratch, you need to use a Scratch editor. It can be installed on a computer, or it can be used online. Scratch is free. Find the Scratch website at http://scratch.mit.edu/

You can create a scratch account and use it to share your programs with others.

There are two versions of Scratch available: Sctratch 2.0 and Scratch 1.4. The latter can be used with Raspberry Pi).

Scratch Programming: Drag and Drop

Scratch: Visual Programming LanguageC++

Scratch !1!31!21!111 ne

Scratch: Visual Programming Language

Python

Scratch

Scratch: Visual Programming Language

Python ?

C++ ?

Object-oriented, multi-thread programming

Scratch: a simple dance program

One sprite with four costumes

Scratch: Playing Music

Games with Scratch

Education and Science with Scratch: FFT

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/37759604/

Education and Science with Scratch: Graphical Multiplication

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/34251632/

Education and Science with Scratch: Object Recognition with Neural Netwroks

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/28741666/

Education and Science with Scratch: Random Walk and Branching Growth

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/988/

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/11463731/

Teaching Maths to Kids

Fun with Maths Maths with Scratch

by Elena and Alex (c98elena@yahoo.com, a.belyaev@hw.ac.uk)

January-June 2014 and October 2014 - present

Currently 1xP4 + 3xP5 + 3xP6 + 1xP745-60 min weekly lessons

In addition to the problem solving sessions, we try give informal lectures on interesting applications of primary school maths in navigation, astronomy, and several other disciplines.This year we try introduce programming of mathematical games/puzzles with Scratch.

Dean Park Primary School (Balerno)

Teaching Maths to Kids

 

51365?

6488

Paper folding

How to measure the thickness of a sheet of paper?

A standard sheet of paper is about one-tenth of a millimetre thick. How many times can you fold in half a piece of paper?

Assume you folded in half a piece of paper 50 times. Can you estimate its thickness?

Teaching Maths to Kids

 

A corner reflector consists of three mutually perpendicular flat mirrors. The incoming light ray is reflected three times (two times in the two dimensional world of Flatland), once by each flat mirror, which results in a reversal direction.

Corner reflectors were used to measure the distance to the Moon with high accuracy.

Corner reflectors arranged together are often used as safety reflectors.

To understand why the corner reflector always reflects the incoming light in the opposite direction you need to know that the sum of the angles of any triangle is equal to 180o.

Teaching Maths to Kids

Consider two points on a rolling track of a bulldozer, seen from the side. The bottom one is in contact with the ground. If the bulldozer moves forward 10 cm, how many centimeters does the red point move? How many centimeters does the blue point move?

Death by chocolate. You are locked in a room with your worst enemy. On a table in the centre of the room is a bar of chocolate, divided into squares in the usual way. One square of the chocolate is painted with a bright green paint that contains a deadly nerve poison. You and your enemy take it in turns to break off one or more squares from the remaining chocolate (along a straight line) and eat them. Whoever is left with the green square must eat it and die in agony. You may look at the bar of chocolate and then decide whether to go first or second. Describe your strategy. (Sample Interview Questions, Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford.)

Teaching Maths to Kids: Draw a Picture – Solve the Problem

79 books are placed on 2 shelves. One shelf has 3 more books than the other. How many books are there on each shelf?

A mountain gnome has a collection of precious stones. His dream is to have three times as many stones as he has now. The gnome noticed that his dream will come true if he adds 18 stones to his collection. How many precious stones does he have now?

Resembles the so-called Singapore Math approach

Children like games A very simple collect-and-avoid game (collect goods, avoid troubles) written by a 10-year-old boy.Scratch reincarnation of the Flappy Bird game.

Teaching Maths with Scratch: a mental maths quiz

Teaching Maths with Scratch

2)12(531 nn Odd number theorem

Teaching Maths with Scratch: Gregory series

7

1

5

1

3

11

4

James Gregorie (he favoured this Scottish spelling over 'Gregory') was born in Drumoak, near Aberdeen, Scotland, in November 1638. His mother had taught James and his older brother to love geometry, and everyone hoped that James in particular would developed his clear talent in mathematics, and also his growing interests in optics and astronomy.

… The feather of a sea bird was to allow Gregory to make another fundamentally important scientific discovery while he worked in St Andrews. The feather became the first diffraction grating.

… He had the misfortune to return to St Andrews after a student uprising.

About a year after assuming the Chair of Mathematics at Edinburgh, James Gregory suffered a stroke while viewing the moons of Jupiter with his students. He died a few days later at the age of 36.

Teaching Maths with Scratch: Number Guessing Game

Binary search !

Now imagine that one answer may be wrong. What will be your strategy?

What if two answers may be wrong?

Teaching Maths with Scratch: The moving knife method for fair cake division (maths of social science)

A referee starts moving a knife (or vertical line) from left to right (or from right to left) across the cake (or any other object to be divided). As soon as any player feels the piece to the left of the knife is worth a fair share, they shout “STOP.” The referee then cuts the cake at the current knife position. The player who called stop gets the piece to the left of the knife. The procedure continues until there is only one player left. He/she gets the remaining piece.

Money maths

Imagine now that you win in lottery and get £1,000,000. You decide that you want to invest all the money in a savings account. Your bank offers you two different plans. In 5 years from now, which plan will provide you with more money?

The bank gives you a 6% interest rate and compounds the interest each month.

The bank gives you a 12% interest rate and compounds the interest every two months.

trAA 1001

Prime factorisation

Picoboard (£30)

Surprisingly only few picoboard+scratch projects are available on the web.

Picoboard

Measuring pulse rate with the picoboard light sensor and a torch

Electrical resistance of tap water, salt water, hot water, cold water, juice, milk, etc.

Picoboard

Simulating a crab defence strategy:

Slow-moving shadow (a slow-moving predator) – running away;

Fast-moving shadow (a fast-moving predator) – staying still

Picoboard http://www.myra-simon.com/myra/scratch/

This shows the result of positioning the Picoboard in front of a west-facing window and monitoring the light sensor for 24 hours, starting at 11pm. The horizontal line shows a tick for every hour.

Picoboard http://www.myra-simon.com/myra/scratch/

Measuring the temperature of melting ice / water with a thermistor

Scratch