Scratch for Educators: Get Started With Scratch

By: Valerie I

Every year, Scratch is used as a tool to animate curriculum and foster creative thinking in millions of classrooms around the world. Together, teacher and student Scratchers reimagine learning, create whimsical worlds with dancing foods, and narrate interactive stories that amplify diverse perspectives in their communities. Through play, students learn to reason systematically and work collaboratively — essential skills for everyone in today’s society. The best part? Scratch is free for all educators and students everywhere!

Getting Started: Understanding Account Types

Teacher Accounts

Getting started with a Scratch Teacher Account can be easy! As an educator, you can request a Teacher Account in just a few minutes by choosing a username, password, and email that you would like to use for the account. Once you confirm your Teacher Account through email, you can use it to create additional accounts for students. The Teacher Account type gives you the administrative capabilities to organize your students into classes, reset their passwords, manage their comments, and more. If you anticipate that more than one educator will work with your group of students on Scratch, then we encourage you to have them make a separate Teacher Account.

Follow these steps to get started:

1. Visit https://scratch.mit.edu/educators/register
2. Create a password and username
3. Confirm your account through the email that you used to create your account

Student Accounts

At Scratch, safety is our top priority. We collect minimal demographic data about Scratchers during the registration process: only requiring users to input their email, gender, country, and the month and year of their birthday. We use this data in aggregated research studies to help inform our understanding of how people experience Scratch.

When introducing Scratch to your students, you may find that some of them already have existing Scratch accounts. We encourage students to keep these accounts for any activities that are unrelated to class, but at this time, there is no way to create classes with pre-existing Scratch accounts; this means that each student will have to create a new account for your specific course.

Setting up your Scratch classroom(s)

Creating Classes

Monitoring students on a platform of over 80 million users can feel like a formidable process. Most educators find that Scratch classes are the most efficient way to manage the workflow of their students.

Once you have successfully logged into your Teacher Account, a “+ New Class” button will appear at the top right corner of the page; click this button to create a new class. You will then have the option to enter a class name and description that aligns with our Community Guidelines. After the class setup is complete, you can add students.

Educators can use their Teacher Accounts to manage multiple classes through the “+New Class” button.

Here at Scratch, we are intentional about maintaining the privacy of our users. When creating an account, we ask that you and your students refrain from using usernames and class descriptions that contain your given first and last name, or any other personally-identifying information like your school name, location, or email address. Accounts that do not adhere to these guidelines will be deleted to ensure the safety of our users.

Adding students to classes

There are three ways to create student accounts and group them into classes:

1. Registration Link- The first way to add students to a class is through a registration link. Once you create a unique link for your class, it will open enrollment for anyone with the URL.
2. CSV Upload- If you want to create student accounts in batches, you can upload a CSV file with the usernames and passwords for your students directly to Scratch. This process will create accounts for all students specified in the CSV file at once.
3. Manual- The final way to add students is to create individual accounts manually. This option is ideal for educators working with smaller groups of students.

You can learn more about class setups here!

Student account privacy and restrictions

We believe everyone plays an instrumental role in keeping our online community safe.

Sometimes, students may engage in inappropriate behavior that does not align with the Scratch Community Guidelines. With your Teacher Account, you can monitor your students’ activity and perform light moderation actions within your class, such as disabling comments for a specific project or profile, deleting students’ comments, and manually removing projects that contain inappropriate elements.

It is important to note that Student Accounts have the same privileges as regular Scratch accounts. Students in your class will be able to share projects, comment, and create studios on topics that may be unrelated to class materials. This means that everything students publish in your class will be visible to the entire Scratch community.

If you find these capabilities unsuitable for your students, we recommend using the Scratch Desktop app. It is an offline version of the Scratch editor, enabling students to create projects without the added components of the online community. We designed the online and desktop versions of Scratch to encourage creative exploration. We are confident that whichever option you choose will inspire your students just the same!

Finding Inspiration: Scratch Tutorials

There is no right or wrong way to use Scratch in your classroom. Educators find that their students are most engaged when they allow students the freedom to explore the topics that interest them.

Scratch tutorials are an excellent place to start! Educators and students use Scratch tutorials as a source of inspiration for integrating different features on the platform. Tutorials range from beginner to advanced levels to meet the needs of all Scratchers, wherever they are in their coding journey. Our “Getting Started” Tutorial is among our most popular. This tutorial is available in 29 languages, guides users through the basics of the Scratch Editor, and highlights the significance of different code blocks and button features.

Once students have covered the Scratch basics, our “Animate a Name” tutorial guides users through a simple coding technique so they can make their names move about on their screens. For a slightly bigger challenge, our “How to Make a Clicker Game” tutorial walks users through more intricate code and teaches them how to design their own customized game.

Educator at Engineering Village Sohar supports students in creating projects on Scratch.

Community and Resources

At Scratch, community is at the heart of all design. We launched Scratch in Practice (SiP) to encourage our global network of educators to get connected and inspired. SiP is a place where educators can find creative resources to help engage their students and learn about different events happening around Scratch. In the past, educators have also used SiP to highlight cool work that their students were doing with Scratch; you can find an archive of those blogs, pictures, and social media posts here!

Get Scratching

Now that you’ve created your Teacher Account, organized your classes, and found some inspiration, it’s time to get Scratching! We’re always eager to celebrate the ways educators use creative coding to expand pathways for students. We want to hear from you and learn about what you’re crafting—use #ScratchInPractice across Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to connect with us. Until then, Scratch on!