I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to run a series of three morning Scratch coding sessions at Yatton Junior School.

We – I’m doing this with my neighbour and friend @gracesauto – have the blessing of the Head Teacher, and the commitment of Year 6 teachers and the enthusiasm of the children.

On our first morning, we learnt that most of the children had already played with Scratch, but needed a bit of a refresher. We used the fantastic Scratch Cards to get things going, and in no time at all the children were using their imagination and creativity to produce some really great stuff.

We’d originally prepared for a session lasting an hour and 15 minutes – but I was told the whole morning had been set aside for us! In hindsight, three hours (punctuated by school assembly, and a much needed cup of tea) was just the perfect amount of time to enable the children to create something really meaningful to them.

After assembly, the children were keen to pick up where they’d left off, creating racing car games, disco scenes, joke tellers, colourful animations, and even a slightly surreal piano composition with fruit as instruments. It was interesting to see the boys working together of creating their racing tracks and the girls more interested in storytelling and creating colourful animations.

They all got a good start with loops, and some of them creating their first variables.

Can’t wait to go back later this week for more Scratching! And all this in the week the Government has published the new school curriculum, with Computing (including Coding) replacing the outdated ICT.