2. In small groups or as a whole class, brainstorm with students to generate ideas for their animated story that will
teach others about the importance that First Nations, Metis or Inuit Peoples place on environmental sustainability,
with a focus on local communities. Some sample prompts include:
o What does it mean to be environmentally sustainable?
o What are the consequences of a lack of environmental sustainability?
o What are some examples of environmentally sustainable practices used by First Nations, Métis, or
Inuit Peoples?
o Why do First Nations, Métis, or Inuit Peoples place importance on environmental sustainability?
Planning Our Project:
Introduce the idea of a flowchart, a type of diagram that shows the sequence of steps involved in performing an
algorithm, with specific symbols used to represent different control structures. The symbols used in a flowchart are:
• Oval - used to show the beginning and end of the program
• Parallelogram - used to represent input or output
• Rectangle - used to show processing (i.e., calculating or
manipulating data)
• Diamond - used to show decisions (i.e., conditionals)
• Lines and arrows - used to connect the shapes to show the
direction of the steps and to represent loops
• Text and labels - included with shapes, as necessary.
Since every student’s project will be different, so will the flowcharts that they
create and the tools or technologies from which they can choose to create
their flowcharts (i.e., pen and paper, dedicated apps and websites for
creating flowcharts). A sample flowchart has been provided below to give a
general sense of what the end product may look like.
Creating Our Project:
Since every student’s project will be unique, there is no single, step-by-step set of instructions to follow; however, the
information below will support your students in the general process of creating an animated story, as well as key
features that they will likely want to include. This sample code further demonstrates how the project might work and
please note that there is code included for each of the sprites and the stage. For your reference, Scratch determines
where to display sprites and controls movement using a Cartesian coordinate system, with (0,0) being the center of the
screen and it may be helpful to pre-teach this concept, if it is one with which students are unfamiliar.
1. Choose or create your backdrop(s) for the project. If adding multiple backdrops, all of them can be added now or
later on but be sure to rename your backdrops as appropriate to help keep track of them through the project.
2. Delete the cat sprite that is automatically added to your project and press the “choose a sprite“ button to select a
new sprite. You may wish to add all sprites that will be needed at this time. Remember that each sprite is
programmed separately, so be sure that you have selected the correct sprite before starting to write your code.
3. Your code must always start with an Event block. In this project, you will likely use the “When Green Flag Clicked“
block. You will also likely use the “When I Receive ()“ block, in combination with the “Broadcast ()“ block throughout
your code to trigger events to create the appearance of interactions between your sprites.
4. Some key features you may wish to use to set a “starting state” for your sprites include:
a. Use the Switch Backdrop To () block to set your starting backdrop and use the Switch Costume To () block
to set the starting costume for your sprite, if appropriate (more on this below).
b. Go To X () Y () will allow you to set a static position for your sprite. This can be used at the start of a line of
code in order to set a “starting position”
c. The Show and Hide blocks can be used intermittently throughout your code in order to have sprites appear
on screen or become “invisible” until a later time.
d. If you plan on having a sprite rotate at any point in your code, you will also want to set a starting direction
for your sprites using the Point In Direction () block.