Operation Manual

A beginner’s guide to Scratch
9
Lesson 1.1: Scratch basics
LEARNING OBJECTIVE: In this exercise, you will learn how to use the Scratch
graphical user interface (GUI), how to create characters (sprites and costumes)
and stages (backgrounds) for your projects, and how to add scripts.
RESOURCES: The sprites “cat” and “roman_cat”, and the background
“roman_stage”.
Have you ever been in a school play? If you have, you’ll know that to put on a play
you need a stage, actors, costumes and a script. Think of Scratch as being a bit
like a play. The actors are called “sprites”.
To make your sprites move and talk, you need to give them instructions. You do
this by writing “scripts” using blocks of code from the Blocks Palette and Scripts
tab on the left of the screen.
That’s enough introductions for now; let’s get to grips with the program itself.
Open Scratch from your Raspberry Pi’s Applications menu. You should now be
looking at the Scratch graphical user interface, or GUI (pronounced “gooey”).
Have a look around and tick the boxes below as you find these items:
Click on the Scripts tab, can you see any instructions for the cat to follow?
You can dress your sprites in “costumes”, and each sprite can have more than
one costume. The “stage” is the area on the screen in which your sprites will
perform the tasks you write for them.
1. The stage (a big white screen)
2. A sprite (clue: it’s a cat)
3. The two costumes that your sprite can wear (click on the Costumes tab)
4. The Scripts tab
Notes: