Theatre & Creating Scripts
Lesson #3
Instructor Scratch Video
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/224350006/
Scripts, Storytelling and Computational Thinking
Grade:2nd
Subject: Computational Thinking and Creative Writing Time: 1 hour
Materials: Board with sample ‘script’, computer with internet access.
Concepts- writing scripts with dialogue and a forward moving plot and storyline. This includes a beginning, forward motion, and conclusions to have the scratch make chronological sense. This means learning light coding and planning the steps of the scratch projects.
Computational Practices– understanding computational thinking and practices that make programs work and why task must be performed in a certain order to crate certain outcomes. This will relate to stories and plays that use chronological order to tell a story.
Outcomes– to understand script-writing and storytelling. This will also touch on scratch and how actions are preformed and how a code needs to be ‘written’ to move your sprite and idea forward.
Learning Objective
To introduce the idea of scripts in theatre and to explain the similarities between story-telling in the theatre and the computational thinking and steps involved in scratch. Students will need to recognize how a command moves the plot forward much like events in scratch will make their sprite work in an interactive way. By the end of this students will be expected to have a sprite that talks and at least one action that moves the story (or adventure) forward at least one time.
Learning Goal
Students will understand and be able to identify the different components of what a theatre script looks like and what goes into storytelling. This also means forward actions and commands . For scratch students will understand and use scripts in scratch, while focusing on looks and events within scratch.
Key Vocabulary: sprite, script, dialogue, structure, action, event, looks command, order, storytelling.
| Duration (By minutes) | Teacher will… | Students will… |
| 1-5 | Talk about scripts like a movie and other types of stories that students are familiar with. | Think of how a story and script work |
| 5-12 | Refresh students on ‘sprites’ and what they are for. From here the teacher will demonstrate what scripts looks like | Follow along with the teacher and get an idea of how to use scratch. |
| 10-20 | Ask their students to think of a fun place for their sprite to travel to. | Think of place where their sprite would like to go. They will then find a picture of this location and save it. |
| 20-35 | The teacher will more thoroughly explain events and looks in scratch as well as backgrounds. There will be | Students will work on their ‘adventure’ |
| 35-55 | Will walk around the room answering questions and providing support to students as they navigate scratch. | Work on their idea with the ‘looks’ ‘events’ and ‘backgrounds’ portion of scratch |
| 55-60
|
Instruct students to save their work | Save their project and return their computer to its designated location. |
Scratch
Much like the script to a movie or play or the plot of a story, to make your scratch project work you need to have events present that ‘start’, ‘move’, and ‘conclude’ your story. To create an event, click on the brown ‘events’ for backgrounds and dialogue click on the blue ‘looks’ button. You will to lock these bricks to together to make your script flow. In this case scratch will used to present a tiny adventure.
Script and steps for educator:
The educator will be building off previous lessons involving scratch (movement and computational thinking) and help students incorporate their knowledge of sprites into a presentation. The educator will also be relying on their students’ knowledge of storytelling and movies to understand the scripts in scratch.
Students:
The students will already have experience with scratch, but the idea of scripts and storytelling will be introduced in more ‘technical’ ways such as how events and dialogue create and move stories forward. Since students will have an idea of sprites this will be a way of using their sprite as a character in a presentation (in this case a very simple story). The goal will to create a scratch project that has a talking ‘sprite’ that has students complete at least one simple action.
Teacher: Start:
To tell a story there are certain ‘parts’ that need to be present to move the story forward and conclude it. After the idea of story-telling and scripts are explained students will be shown ‘events’ and ‘looks’ in scratch and learn about different ways these control the scratch presentation.
Minutes 1-5: The teacher will remind students of how scripts in a play work and how events in stories
The teacher will give a more thorough explanation of scratch, building off a previous lesson about sprites, the characters used in scratch presentations. Students will also have previous elements of scratch saved from previous lessons. The teacher will start by showing students the basics of events and
actions in scratch. This will begin by showing students the brown ‘events’ portion of scratch. From here students will see the purple ‘looks’ portion of scratch and how to make their sprite ‘talk.’ This will be connected to how dialogue is written in a play or movie. This is also where commands to move the plot forward will be demonstrated.