ANIMATE YOUR NAME / EDUCATOR GUIDE ANIMATE YOUR NAME / EDUCATOR GUIDE

EDUCATOR GUIDE Workshop Overview

Animate a Name Here’s a suggested agenda for a

one-hour workshop:

With this guide, you can plan and lead

a one-hour workshop using Scratch.
Participants will gain experience with coding First, gather as a group to
as they animate the letters in a word or introduce the theme and
name. IMAGINE spark ideas.
10 minutes

Next, help participants as

they animate their names,
CREATE working at their own pace.
40 minutes

At the end of the session,

gather together to share
SHARE and reflect.
10 minutes

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Get Ready for the Workshop Imagine IMAGINE

Use this checklist to prepare for the workshop. Begin by gathering the participants to introduce
the theme and spark ideas for projects.
Preview the Tutorial
The Animate Your Name tutorial shows
participants how to create their own Warm-up Activity: Letter Shapes
projects. Preview the tutorial before your
workshop and try the first few steps: Gather the group in a circle. Ask each participant to say their
scratch.mit.edu/name name, and then have everyone in the group act out the shape
of the first letter.

Print the Activity Cards

Provide Ideas and Inspiration
Print a few sets of Animate Your Name
cards to have available for participants
during the workshop. Show the introductory video for the Animate Your Name tutorial.
scratch.mit.edu/ideas The video shows a variety of projects for ideas and inspiration.

Make sure participants have Scratch accounts

Participants can sign up for their own Scratch accounts at
scratch.mit.edu, or you can set up student accounts if you
have a Teacher Account. To request a Teacher Account, go to:
scratch.mit.edu/educators

Set up computers or laptops

Arrange computers so that participants can
work individually or in pairs.

Set up a computer with projector or large monitor View at scratch.mit.edu/name or vimeo.com/llk/name

You can use a projector to show examples and
demonstrate how to get started.

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Demonstrate the First Steps IMAGINE Create CREATE

Demonstrate the first few steps of the tutorial Support participants as they create
so participants can see how to get started. interactive name projects.

In Scratch, click Create. Start with Prompts

Choose a letter from the Sprite Library: Ask participants questions to get started

Do you want to animate your Which letter do you

name, initials, or username? want to start with?
Glow-A

Make it do something: Provide Resources

Offer options for getting started

Try different numbers.

Add a sound:

Click the Sounds tab.

Some participants may want Others may want to explore
to follow the online tutorial: using the activity cards:
scratch.mit.edu/name scratch.mit.edu/ideas
Choose a sound. Choose your sound from the menu.

Suggest Ideas for Starting

Choose a new backdrop:

• Choose a letter • Add a sound

• Make it change color • Add a backdrop
5
Boardwalk

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CREATE Share SHARE

More Things to Try

Have participants share their project
• Draw a letter Add more letters and motion!
with their neighbors.
• Make it spin
• Make it glide Ask questions they can discuss:
• Change size

What do you like best about What was the

the project you made? hardest part?

Support collaboration
If you had more time, what would you add or change?
• When someone gets stuck,
connect them to another
participant who can help.
• See a cool idea? Ask the What’s Next?
creator to share with others.
Participants can use the ideas and concepts from this
workshop to create a wide variety of projects. Here are a few
variations on the animated name project you could suggest.

Encourage experimenting

Help participants feel comfortable trying different

combinations of blocks and seeing what happens. Other Names Start with Acrostics
an Image
Animate the Make an interactive
To understand their thought process, you can ask questions: Have participants
name of a favorite acrostic (a poem
character from a bring in a picture (or in which the first
What are you What are you thinking book or movie. Or, find a picture on the letters of each line
working on now? of trying next? animate the letters web) and animate a spell out a word
of the name of your word that goes with reading down).
school or town. the picture.

Created by the Scratch Team

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