The leap from Scratch to other programming environments can be daunting for elementary and middle school age youth. Scratch was designed with a fairly unique programming model that, while easy for anyone to pick up, isn’t always an obvious path to programming in other contexts such as high school courses, higher-education, or industry.

How do we get youth over this gap and ease them into general, non-blocks-based programming?

WoofJS is a free JavaScript framework/website specifically designed to help solve this problem. It’s intended for kids and educators who’re familiar with Scratch but want something more! In this workshop we’ll cover the basics of JavaScript, making small games with WoofJS, and go through exercises comparing how similar games look when made in both Scratch and WoofJS. We’ll be providing tutorial materials teachers can take with them and a clear path of where students can head next after they’ve grown comfortable with JavaScript. Only free and/or open source resources will be discussed and all handouts or slides will be provided through GitHub. The content is aligned to NGSS and Common Core standards as a part of our work with Portland Public Schools.

• Instructor — Clarissa Caylee Littler
• Grades — Middle School
• Experience Level — Beginner
• Area — Programming/Coding
• Session Type — Hands-on

Course materials

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