Beginner Level 2
Lesson 1
A Bit of Programming!
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Let's remember that programming (also called coding) is the way that humans communicate with technology.
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Just like the languages we use to talk to each other (Spanish, French, Japanese, English), there are lots of different coding languages we can use to talk to computers, robots, and more!
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The coding language we are going to be using is called Scratch.
Step 1: Let's talk about commands in coding
When we are trying to tell the computer to do something we use commands (the instructions) and the computer responds accordingly.
Watch this video to learn about a command called a loop!
Why are loop commands so important?
The code can be shorter and more efficient by using loops.
Instead of having to tell the code 100 separate times to ice the cupcake, they only had to tell it one time and indicate in the loop to repeat it 100 times.
Let’s see how the concept of a loop can be used in real code below.
Step 2: Let's head over to Scratch to put a Loop in our code!
If you need a refresher on Scratch, click the button below to review
Click on the window below to open Scratch!
Follow these steps to trace a square in Scratch
1. Click this button in the bottom left hand corner of the page and then click the pen to enable to Pen Tool Extension.
2. Add the following blocks (in the exact order as below) to make the cat sprite trace a square when you hit the green flag
3. Now using the Loop we learned about in the video, try to use an orange repeat block to make a square.
A repeat block is sort of like the bread of a sandwich, so the blocks you put inside the orange block are the commands that get repeated.
The commands that should be inside your orange repeat block should be:
4. If you want to check your code hover over the picture of the cat sprites!
