MrW's Computing Blog

Dear Year 5’s

I’m sorry I can’t be with you today, but it will be a good test of your independence as a class – make sure you use your most powerful resources: yourselves, your Growth Mindset and positive learning attitudes and each other – keep trying.

You have a choice of two challenges:

Challenge #1 – “Prezi perfection”

• LQ:  How can I improve my Prezi?
• Go to Prezi, log in and find your project
• Use this last opportunity to make your Prezi amazing! – adding new content or Prezi features that help give information clearly and attractively.
• See this previous post for more suggestions.

Challenge #2 – “Scratch mini tasks”

• Go to Scratch – you can login if you like, but don’t need to – click on “create” to make a new project
• We will be creating games next term so here are some mini tasks to get you warmed up.
• Stick with the cat sprite with no background.

Work your way through these tasks

1.  Gravity – put together:  When Green flag clicked, forever, change y by -1
   1. He should fall when you click the green flag
2.  Gravity 2 – change your gravity block by adding:  if…then, < (in operators) , y position , 0
   1. He should fall until he gets to 0 height (the middle of the screen)
   2. Can you change the number so that he lands on the bottom of the screen?
3. Jumping – start a new block with:  When space key pressed, change y by 50
4. Walking
   1. click the “i” on the sprite, then change rotation style to the double arrow  <–>
   2. Make two new blocks:
      1. When left arrow key pressed, point in direction left, change x by -10
      2. When right arrow key pressed, point in direction right, change x by 10
5. Random movement
   1. Create a new sprite – a ball
   2. Make this block: when flag clicked, point in direction, pick random 1 to 360 (in operators), forever, move 10 steps, if on edge bounce (only have the move inside the forever)
6. A basic game!
   1. Add to the cat script: when green flag clicked, forever, if…then , touching ball, say “Ouch” for 1 second
   2. Play your game and see if you can avoid the ball!
   3. How could you make it easier or harder?  Try out your ideas
7. Mouse control
   1. You could make it a 2-player game by controlling the ball with the mouse:
   2. Change the ball script to: when flag clicked, forever, point towards sprite1, move 2 step
   3. Play with a partner!

1. Decompose your game idea here
2. Pick one element to work on first – eg your main sprite
   1. Start with the way it moves – keyboard controls? mouse? forever moving?
   2. Now deal with how it reacts to other things – other sprites? the score? gravity? the floor/walls/platforms?
3. Spend your effort on the programming today rather than the graphics – you can do that later.
4. Be reflective – fill out the How did that go form.

Admin task:

1. Log into Prezi
   1. Click on “view Prezi”
   2. Underneath the Prezi, click “Embed”
   3. Copy the code
   4. Open you j2e “Prezi” page
   5. Click on the “video/sound/embed” button
   6. Paste the Prezi embed code into the box
   7. Place and resize your Prezi on your page and save

2  Let’s decompose!

1. Choose one of these games – what elements do they have?
2. Find your entry from last week here
   1. Edit only your row (I can tell…)
   2. Look at your answers and improve by giving more detail
   3. Challenge: What blocks in Scratch might you use?

Planning

1. http://www.j2e.com/stmarks/bwilliams/Scratch+game+planner/
2. Save in your files

Tables game planning (if you need it…):

1. http://code-it.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/tables_planning.pdf
2. http://code-it.co.uk/scratch/tablesgame/tablesgameoverview

Making

1.  https://scratch.mit.edu/
2. Explore tools and experiment
3. Use your planner to build your game bit by bit – the better you have decomposed your game, the easier it will be.
4. Edit your planner if your plan changes…

• Have a look at the Year 3 blog icon.
• Go to http://gifpaint.com/ and try it out!
  • brush size
  • colours
  • speed
  • copy and paste frames
  • onion skins
• Can you make an animated icon for one of our blogs?
• Think about:
  • keeping it simple
  • filling the space
  • colours
  • keeping it the same for a second?
• When you are done – “encode gif” and save it where I can find it – or even better, email it to me!