Author(s): Anumol Joshy

How Can Scratch Coding Enhance Learning About Food Chains?

This engaging and interactive lesson blends science and coding by teaching students about food chains through Scratch programming. While learning the basic coding concepts, students will investigate the roles of producers, primary consumers, secondary consumers, and tertiary consumers. Even though they might be familiar with Scratch, some students are still learning how to code and will get help learning to code using Scratch cards. Using coding in this lesson enhances students’ understanding of ecosystems by enabling them to visualize and interact with the food chain through Scratch cards and guided instruction, fostering active, hands-on learning and scaffolding for beginners with step-by-step support from the teacher.

How Does Creating a Virtual Pet Introduce Food Chains and Coding?

Hook: create your own pet (15 minutes)

• Begin with a quick discussion: “What is a food chain?” Encourage students to share examples they know.
• Show a short video on the food chain (e.g., grass -> rabbit -> fox).
• Show the students a completed animated virtual pet using the scratch card so they can understand what they could get from using a scratch card.

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1149877319

• Introduce the activity: Students will use Scratch to animate their own animals and simulate feeding and playing with them.
• For those new to coding, use the Scratch Green Card and follow the Virtual Pet Cards step-by-step.

Scratch card:

https://resources.scratch.mit.edu/www/cards/en/scratch-cards-all.pdf – Page 164

How to work on it:

Activity: make your own wild animal (50 min)

Select a Wild Animal:
Students will choose a wild animal to research.

Research:
Students will investigate the following about their animal:

• The animal’s food habits (what it eats and how it obtains food)
• The ecosystem it inhabits (habitat, climate, etc.)
• The animal’s predators and any threats to its survival (such as diseases, human activity, or other environmental factors)

Create an Interactive Scratch Ecosystem:
Using their research, students will create an interactive Scratch environment that includes:

• A producer (plant): A plant that the animal may interact with (e.g., as food or a part of the environment).
• A consumer (herbivore or carnivore): The animal selected eats the plant or interacts with other organisms.
• Interactions: Code interactions such as a plant growing, the animal eating the plant, or a predator chasing its prey.

A survival threat: One factor that threatens the animal’s survival, such as diseases, predation, or habitat loss.

The consolidation portion:

Product: Presentation
After completing their project, students will present their Scratch code to the class, demonstrating the interactions between organisms in their ecosystem and explaining their chosen animal’s survival challenges. The students will present their code to the class, showing their completed scratch code on the wild animal in their ecosystem.

Further resource information:

Learning to Code & Coding to Learn

Grade(s): 7

Main subject: Science

Other integrated subjects: Coding

URL Link: Scratch card: https://resources.scratch.mit.edu/www/cards/en/scratch-cards-all.pdf -Page 164

Tags: Code-combat, Python, Javascript, Game-based learning, Fun