Computer Science 4-H Project Area

Discovering Computer Science and Programming Through Scratch curriculum introduces young people to five fundamental principles of computer programming, providing a foundation for exploring and creating. Scratch is a project of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. Each youth in a group should have his/her own guidebook.

Level 1 – Youth interact with a series of tutorials and challenges within the Scratch environment. Young people can work on the activities individually, with partners, or in a guided instructional setting.

Level 2 – This book delves deeper into important principles of computer science such as generalization and modularity, and introduces some additional features of Scratch such as clones and lists. Going through this book should strengthen youth’s programming skills, help them write better programs, and provide interesting ideas for further exploration.

Level 3 – This book focuses on an interesting, powerful, and important technique from computer science called recursion. A recursive program is one which “calls itself”. In Scratch, this means using a block for the script within the very script that defines the block. Recursion makes solving many problems easier, and also allows one to do some things that would be very difficult to do without it, such as drawing intricate fractals.

WVU is an EEO/Affirmative Action Employer -- Minority/Female/Disability/Veteran.
In accordance with Federal law and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) civil rights regulations and policies, this institution is prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, age, disability, and reprisal or retaliation for prior civil rights activity. (Not all prohibited bases apply to all programs).
The WVU Board of Governors is the governing body of WVU. The Higher Education Policy Commission in West Virginia is responsible for developing, establishing, and overseeing the implementation of a public policy agenda for the state’s four-year colleges and universities.
Reasonable accommodations will be made to provide this content in alternate formats upon request. Contact the WVU Extension Service Office of Communications at 304-293-4222.