This page lists the concepts students are expected to learn during the course of completing their Scratch programming assignments. There will be a skills assessment quiz to evaluate whether further instruction is required.
The primary study materials are in the videos supporting the first few assignments. Refer to the assignments’ web pages for links to the videos.
Variables
A variable is a reserved location in the computer’s memory where your program may store a value and refer to it later. The value stored can be text such as a word or sentence, or a number such as a score.
Variables should have meaningful names.
String Concatenation
String in this context refers to a series of text characters. A word or a sentence. Concatenation is the operation where strings are joined together. Your program may use this to combine pre-defined text with variable text. The Mad Libs assignment requires string concatenation.
Conditional Processing
Conditional processing is the programming concept that enables a program to do different things under different conditions or situations. The classic example of conditional processing is the “if” statement: if it is cold, wear a hat.
Boolean Expressions
A Boolean expression is the programming concept that asks a question with an answer that is true or false. It is the question which is evaluated at runtime to determine which path a program will execute due to a conditional processing. They always involve comparing two values using the equals, greater than, less than, greater than or equal, or less than or equal. = > < >= <=
2 < 3 is TRUE
2 < 1 is FALSE
Boolean Expressions can be complex, with multiple expressions combined using the operators AND and OR.
If (health < 0) or (time_remaining < 0): GAME OVER