Motion blocks can create the following types of movements:

• Moving sprites
• Turning sprites
• Making sprites point in a given direction
• Making sprites move to a given point on the stage, to another sprite or to the mouse pointer
• Changing the x and y co-ordinates of the sprite on the stage
• Making the sprite bounce if its hits the edge of the stage
• Altering the style with which a sprite rotates

These blocks form the basis for a lot of games and animations, below is a screenshot of how using motion blocks may work:

Using the different blocks, my sprite (donut) will:

• Move 10 steps
• Turn 15 degrees
• Glide to a random position on the stage
• And will bounce if it hits the edge of the stage

Every time we click on that block sequence, the donut will repeat the four steps above.

Looks can be used with sprites or backdrops. This type of block allows you to do the following:

• Display text, either for a fixed period of time or indefinitely
• Show or hide your sprites
• Switch costumes for sprites or backdrops for your stages
• Change colour effects or remove them
• Change the size of the sprites
• Move sprites backwards or forwards using layers

Using the different blocks, my sprite (donut) will:

• Say Hello! For 10 seconds
• Switch costume to Abby-b (which I set previously)
• And reduce in size by 50%

Every time we click on that block sequence, the sprite will repeat the three look steps above. If we then click on the motion block, it will take the Abby-b sprite and repeat the four steps from the above example.

These blocks allow you to do the following:

• Play or stop sounds – these can either come from the Scratch library or ones that you have uploaded yourself
• Play drum sounds and notes
• Change or set the volume or tempo

Using the different blocks, my sprite will:

• Make a sound that sounds like a Bite
• The pitch is set to 100
• And the volume set to 90%

Every time we click on the purple blocks – the sound will repeat.

Event blocks are fundamental to Scratch as this tells the script to run. Event blocks allow you to do the following:

• Start everything off
• Blocks for other user interactions
• Trigger events by the backdrop or costume changing
• Broadcast messages from one sprite and then have another sprite respond to that message with an events block

Using the events block, the

• First motion block will be triggered once the green flag is clicked
• If I click on the sprite it will make a chomping sound

These let you control the blocks within your scripts – inserting conditionals, loops, repeats and pauses – making your code much more efficient.

Command blocks allow you to:

• Pause the script
• Add conditionals – wrap these around a set of blocks to make something happen if a condition is met
• Add loops – repeat a set of blocks a given number of times, forever, or until a condition is met
• Stop all loops
• Create and use clones

The two command blocks at the bottom will ensure that after the script has ended, it will wait for 1 second and then repeat the process.

These let you identify what is happening at a given point and make your sprites or background respond accordingly.

These blocks allow you to:

• Detect whether items are touching each other or at a given distance from each other
• Ask the user a question
• Detect key presses and mouse clicks
• Time the runtime of a project

For example, you can use control blocks in games to make the player lose when one object touches another, or to detect if a sprite is moving fast enough to crash through another sprite.

On this example, we have added in the sensing block that means every time the backdrop is switched to ‘backdrop1’, ‘Donut’ sprite will say ‘What’s your name’.

These blocks allow you to:

• Add, subtract, multiply and divide one value by another
• Pick a random number between two numbers you define
• Identify if two values are less than, great than or equal to each other
• Join other blocks together or work with just one part of a block’s value
• Round values and identify whether the result of a calculation has a remainder

When the green flag is clicked, this code will forever check if the value in the age variable is great than the value of 65. If the value is greater than 65, the sprite will say “You can retire” – otherwise, nothing will happen.

Variables are like containers that can hold a number or a word. These blocks will allow you to set your own variable to a value that you give it. For instance, you can create a variable called ‘greetings’ and when you use this within your script you can add a value to it, such as ‘If greetings = 2’ ‘then the script will say hello for 2 seconds’. On your stage, whenever the stage monitor equals 2 your script will respond to the value you set the variable at. A stage monitor is the name of the orange counter which appears on the top left of the stage when you make a variable. The name on this orange counter matches the name you gave when you made a variable block. The counter will change when you set up rules that will change the number in your code e.g. pick a random number.

To give an example, we are going to make a programme that generates two random numbers. The sprite will then report what these two randomly generated numbers are.

First, we want to create two variables to store these two randomly generated numbers. You do this by clicking on Make a Variable and then name them accordingly:

Next, we must set the value of these variables to be random numbers every time the flag button is clicked:

As you can see, we used an Events Block to ensure the script runs, and then used two Operations Block within the Variables Block to set the random number. You can see the two random numbers displayed on the Stage Area in the top left corner.

Next, we need the sprite to tell us what these two numbers are – we do this by using the following Sound Block:

As you can see, this has been made by using the Event, Variables, Operators and Sound Blocks.