Grade 1 ScratchJr race between the hare and the tortoise, with the hare stopping to sleep

Grade 1 (Year 2, age 6 to 7) · 60 min · 1 tablet per student

Year 2 have heard Aesop's fable of the hare and the tortoise, and now make it run. Each child builds their own project in ScratchJr on a school tablet, with no accounts, choosing or drawing a hare, a tortoise and a finish line. They give each animal its own script: the tortoise moves slowly with small steps, the hare runs fast, stops with a wait block and a 'Zzz' speech bubble, then sets off again. Children press the green flag, watch the race and change the speed, steps and waits until the tortoise wins by a whisker, and the lesson ends with children swapping tablets with a partner to run each other's race and say which block made the hare lose.

Why this is Creative Amplify

Each child designs and builds their own program that tells the story, so they are making an original artefact. The task is the one they would do with floor robots, writing and debugging a sequence that makes characters move, and ScratchJr adds to it: each animal runs its own script at once, speeds and waits can be set, and the race replays straight away after every change.

Compared with

Programming two Bee-Bots to race along a story mat of The Hare and the Tortoise, with the pause key for the hare's sleep.

Watch out

If every child copies the teacher's finished scripts block for block, they are following instructions rather than designing a program, and the lesson moves to the Interactive row; it would be Creative Transform if the race responded to whoever was using it, not because the program runs.

Tools: ScratchJr Nine ideas for your own version in Generate

This page is one of a growing set of PICRAT examples by cell, subject and grade. Page maintained by Andy Perryer.

Grade 1 ScratchJr race between the hare and the tortoise, with the hare stopping to sleep.

Nine ideas for your own version.

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Nine ideas for your own version.