Understand which parts make up Marty the Robot

Point out different body parts and have a basic understanding of how they move

This first lesson is an introduction to Marty and gets students to start thinking about what different parts are used to make him. The basics of which parts move and how will be covered through allowing students the opportunity to design their own Marty the Robot and try out the different movements for themselves.

Class discussion of what a robot is by getting students to consider how they would define a robot and name any robots that they have heard about

Continue class discussion by getting students to think about what jobs/tasks robots do and where you would find them (try going through some of the examples of robots mentioned in part 1)

Using Marty body diagram worksheet in the Marty workbook, ask students to name the different parts on the sheet and label them

Continuing with this worksheet, ask students to circle the joints/the parts of the body that they think will move

Using Marty colouring-in worksheet, give students chance to colour in their Marty and design their own ‘Marty stickers’, showing some examples of different Marty styles to them beforehand for inspiration

Cut out the different body parts and fasten them together using paper fasteners. Students should now have their own paper Marty representing the different body parts that move

Paper Marty Worksheet

Label Marty Worksheet

1.1 – Introduction to Marty the Robot

• Robot
• Movement
• Joints
• Paper Engineering

Try combining different poses to start putting together some dance moves for Marty

Students could try to come up with their own different actions for Marty and try to draw these for other students to try and recreate (first of all using their paper prototype and then using coding blocks)

Relate coding blocks and coding to real life situations 

Predict what outcomes different blocks of code will have on the world 

Put together different blocks of code to achieve certain actions/outcomes

Now that students have their own Marty paper prototype, we will start to build upon student’s understanding that programming is essentially a list of instructions. There will be an emphasis on trying to relate this back to ‘real life’ to make things more relatable. Students will be able to start breaking down blocks of code to make sense of each individual instruction before starting to put together their own small programs to control Marty.

1. Show a few different examples of Marty Says action cards showing the different poses that Marty can make 

2. Students should then try to recreate these actions using their paper prototype 

3. Get students to think about the steps that they took to recreate the pose using their paper Marty and write down instructions for someone to repeat (relating back to the idea that programming is like a recipe). Then test these out using either paper Marty prototypes or by getting a student volunteer to pretend to be the class robot 

4. Students should then move to their devices and launch the Scratch editor before starting to put together different blocks together to achieve the pose shown on a variety of different cards that they select from random

Introduction to Programming with Marty using Scratch

Marty Says Cards

1.2 – Introduction to Programming

Encourage students to think about how they would improve these small programs and them to try implementing the ideas

Recognise when the program has a bug or error 

Understand why the error is happening and how to fix it

Students have now had their first taste of programming using the Scratch editor. In this lesson, they will begin to become more comfortable with the interface being used and start to build up an understanding of where certain blocks can be found. As part of this lesson, we will be introducing a little bit of debugging and trying to get students to recognise when something isn’t happening correctly and why it is important that we test out our programs frequently

1. Remind students of the last lesson where we introduced programming Marty with Scratch by showing some examples of blocks on the screen and asking students what they think would happen 

2. Given a few examples, ask students to run a couple of small, pre-written, programs in Scratch and observe whether they do what they should be doing 

a. Encourage students to think about what the aim of the program is and how they would program Marty to meet it 

b. Ask students to highlight what the small problems are with the program(s) 

3. Introduction to debugging and why it is important that we test our scripts out with emphasis from real-world situations/events

4. Ask students to go and fix the problem with the program 

5. Repeat exercise with a couple of different small programs of debugging and remixing

1.3 – Getting Comfortable with Scratch

Ask students to think about popular dance moves that they know of and see if they can program Marty to do these moves 

Get students to pick a song to create a dance to, so that they can then try to develop moves that work along with that song

Build upon knowledge of movements and functionalities that Marty has 

Develop a Scratch program to program Marty to dance 

Start to think about joining different movements together

In this lesson, we follow on from the first three lessons where students have started to explore not only programming but also what we can program Marty to do. We will continue to explore the different functionalities and features of Marty by programming Marty to dance, challenging students to have a Marty dance-off!

1. Recap what has been done in previous lessons, including looking at different moves that Marty can do by showing a couple of the Marty Says action cards and touch on how important it is to test your code frequently 

2. Students break into small groups (2-4) and begin to plan out their dance before moving on to their devices to program Marty 

3. Student groups take turns to demo the dance moves that they have programmed 

4. Students can then go back to development to add new things to their routine or improve current moves after class demonstrations

1.4 – Marty Dance Party

In this pack, learners with very little or no programming experience will be introduced to a block-based programming language where they will have the opportunity to create their own programs that can run on Marty. By the end of the lesson pack, learners will have a solid understanding of how to use the Scratch interface and will be able to create small programs to get Marty moving, exploring what kind of movements we can program Marty to do.

Learning Portal

Learner Resources —

Lesson Pack 1: Introduction to Marty & Scratch

Lesson Pack Overview