Hands on English class using Scratch to practice dialogues

Publication date: October 9, 2019

By Ana, code Week Teacher in Portugal

I teach English in Casal de Cambra – Portugal. For me, coding is a new experience and I’m learning at the same time as my students. Actually, it’s not true … They learn faster than me!!!

As we have a computer room with a computer for every student I decided that Scratch was a good activity to motivate them to start coding. They can use images to make a dialogue, which
makes them practice the following language functions:

• „Introducing yourself and others“
• „Asking for and giving personal information“

I explained to them, more or less, how to get started with Scratch (after spending two hours practising the night before!) and, they, quickly became experts in it. Even the ones that always say that English is very difficult, and never want to write, became involved and produced a dialogue.

It was a very good experience and I will repeat it for sure. It’s a good activity to train the different language functions they need to learn and I’m looking forward to seeing the nice
dialogues they will make when we talk about their daily routine!