New term -6&7s

Last term I was very impressed by the years 3-5 efforts in Scratch with one student able to  to talk to an Arduino. This term the yeas 6&7s have blow me away with both their enthusiasum and their ability to quickly learn the basics of Scratch.  At least 2 students have moved straight onto programming Arduinos.  We are using a computer club book to keep track of each weeks tasks and what each student has completed.  This will help me as well as the students look back and see how much they have learnt.  It also keeps a record of the tricks they have learnt to solve complex problems.  Please ensure you work at this a little bit each week to develop your skills.

This week's task which I pasted into the Student Journal is to create the game of PONG.  The assignement is:

1. Cretae a ball (centered) and 2 blocks on the left and right  to use as bats (example shown)
2. Start the ball moving left to right when the space bar is pressed. If the ball does not hit your block, then the ball is lost off screen. Move left block up/down using [Q,Z] keys,move right bat up/down using [up arrow, down arrow].

Extra things to do:

1. Add a score – you get a point in the other player misses
2. stop the blocks (bats) moving off then screen when moving up and down.
3. Add a random angle to the ball after it hits the bat to add difficulty to the game
4. When the ball strikes the bat, make sound “pop” and return the ball (like tennis).
5. Change service (ball goes in the other direction when space bar is hit) if you loose (miss the ball)