Students in Heather Carter and Faith Manundo’s second-grade classes at Cherry Chase Elementary are expanding their idea of literacy to include computer programming and stop motion. With the help of Anu Agarwal, a parent volunteer, the class created projects using ScratchJr, an introductory programming language that enables young children to create their own interactive stories and games.
The classes made informational “All About” animal books for an informational writing project. Once the students finished their final draft of a page—appearance, habitat, diet, and fun fact— they made a canvas of that page’s background and animal, and coded it to move. Once they had finished writing all of their pages, they recorded themselves and narrated their All About projects. Click on the videos below for examples of their finished projects.
For informational writing, students also wrote biographies on an important figure in American history. They did a craft to create the person they wrote about and then used the app Chatterpix to bring to life the person they wrote about. They recorded three facts and in the end, it looked like the person they wrote about was talking and telling the reader about themselves. Click on the videos below for examples of their finished projects.
Students also did a narrative writing project about a vacation they went on. After turning that writing into a book they created a stop motion animation project to bring their writing to life. Click on the videos below for examples of their finished projects.
To celebrate their hard work, on May 23rd, 2024 they had an Authors’ Showcase in the school library where parents, admin, district leaders, and board members were invited to celebrate the success of our amazing second-grade authors as we highlighted their interactive writing projects.
Links to videos of the projects
Scratch Jr. project on butterflies
