Introduction to Coding

This lesson gives children in 4th, 5th or 6th Class, an introduction to coding and the fundamental concepts of computer programming.

This is a teacher led lesson. You should use a large screen display to show the video and then do the "Program the Teacher" exercise and group discussion with your class.

Autonomous Car (part 2)

In part 2 of this lesson, we will add people that randomly walk around and we will program our autonomous car to detect and avoid them.

Note: You need to complete Autonomous Car (part 1) before you start this lesson.

Space Shooter

In this lesson we will control a spaceship with your mouse and shoot down balloons that randomly appear on the screen. We'll use variables to keep track of your score and how many lives you have left.

Guess the County

In this lesson we will create a game called "Guess the County". A map of Ireland with the counties outlined is displayed and players choose a county by dropping a pin on it. They then need to guess what the county is and the game records all their correct and incorrect answers.

Microbit Basics

This lesson introduces students to Microbits and explains what the are and how to program them. At the end of the lesson students will create their first Microbit program and send it to their Microbit.

Maze - Artificial Intelligence

In this lesson we will program a sprite to figure out how to navigate a maze using random decision making and we will time the beetle to see how fast it can complete the maze.

Shopping List

In this lesson we create a shopping list and choose which items to add to it. Then when we're finished what's on the shopping list gets read back out.

The Salmon of Knowledge

In this lesson we will create the Salmon of Knowledge story and use the 'message' blocks to time when the characters say their lines.

Internet Safety

This lesson teaches students about the internet, what's good about it and it's risks. It gives students some rules for being safe online.

This is a teacher led lesson. You should use a large screen display to show the video and continue on with the other steps of the lesson.

Scratch Basics

This lesson introduces students to the Scratch programming language and the Scratch website that we use to create Scratch projects.

Note: In January 2019 Scratch 3.0 was released. This has an updated interface, additional sprites & backdrops and some additional functionality. The below video uses the older version of Scratch but will still give you a very good understanding of what it is and how it works.

Autonomous Car (part 1)

In this lesson we will program a car to drive around a test track with no one driving it except a computer program!

Maze Game

In this game students program their character to navigate their way through a maze using the arrow keys on their keyboard.

Eye Colour Predictor

In this lesson we will create a program that predicts the colour of a child's eyes based on the eye colour of his/her parents. After choosing an eye colour for each parent, this program will tell you what are the percentage chances of the child having blue, brown or green eyes.

Around the World

In this lesson we will do some math to calculate how long it would take to walk, drive or fly all the way around the world!

Note: the instructions for this project are for Scratch 2.0 but they should also work for Scratch 3.0.

Make a Character

In this lesson we will make a program that allows us to create characters and dress them up in different clothes and accessories.

Higher or Lower

In this lesson we will create a "Higher or Lower" game where we'll use random numbers between 1 and 100 and guess if the next number will be higher or lower than the previous number.