Give a group of Year 9 girls the option to do some coding or watch a film at the end of term, and you think they’d want to watch a film.
Well not the last ever class I taught at my current school! They wanted to do some Scratch, some out of nostalgia because they hadn’t done it for years, and some because they had never done any Scratch coding.
On the spur of the moment I had to come up with what I thought was the simplest possible game I could, but keep it open-ended enough to challenge those who’d done some Scratch before. It was a fascinating lesson for me, and here’s the game I came up with. Use the mouse to help hungry bear eat the flying tacos, avoid the ladybirds! (Requires Flash).
It would clearly work with children much younger than year 9 (I did something similar with a year 4 class) but it was fascinating to see how something so simple kept Year 9s engaged for a double lesson. I’d love to know what you think!