By: Victoria Fong

Virtual Pet Cards

Intro to Scratch Coding Through a Virtual Pet Project

This scratch card tutorial provides a run through on how to set up a simulation to take care of a virtual pet. There are 4 main features to set up including, eating food, a hunger bar that decreases/increases, drinking water, and playing with a ball. First, the instructions guide you through how to create a sprite pet, and add interactions to the sprite such as petting and feeding it. It then makes you use variables to store the pet’s data such as a hunger level as well as loops to make the hunger decrease. Lastly, it uses conditional statements to increase the hunger level when the food is clicked by the user. In terms of its use in class, the scratch cards allow a good start for students who are just beginning to learn how to code. It creates a hands-on learning experience that rewards and encourages student creativity to add their own features. Encouraging students to go beyond the scratch cards allows for inquiry based thinking, while reinforcing the skills learnt from the instructions. Furthermore, this activity helps students develop computational thinking skills, as if they run into a problem with their code, they can break down the problem into manageable parts. Overall, there is a lot of room to add creative features to the virtual pet code and even customize to each student’s ideas. For instance, I made a virtual pet for an online cat (https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1133693183/), adding my own features and ideas. Students could even add a bathing or a sleeping feature to extend the program.

Step-by-Step Guide for Teaching Scratch: Virtual Pet Edition

To use this resource in a classroom, I would begin by giving students an overview of the virtual pet they will be creating. I would introduce the main concepts they will learn, such as using variables, loops, and conditional statements. Next, I would give each student a copy of the Scratch card tutorial and guide them through the setup as a class, demonstrating each key step and pausing frequently to check for understanding. I would ensure that all students are on the same page before moving forward. Once the basic version of the virtual pet is complete, I would encourage students to personalize their projects. I might suggest adding extra features, like a sleeping animation or a happiness meter, to make the pet more interactive. I would also encourage them to add sound effects or change the background to match their pet’s environment. After giving students time to make adjustments and complete their program. I would make the students present and show their peers how their remixed code and program runs. This builds confidence for the students to share their projects, and gives them an opportunity to share creative ideas and learn from each other. I would encourage them to explain the features they added and why they made those choices. Additionally, I might organize peer feedback sessions where students can suggest improvements or new ideas for each other’s projects.

Resource Information

Tags: Virtual pet simulation

URL link to resource: https://resources.scratch.mit.edu/www/cards/en/pet-cards.pdf

Cost: free