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Custom Blocks & Abstraction

Summary

This chapter centers on Scratch's Make a Block feature as an introduction to procedural abstraction, covering block definitions, naming, calling, and the single-responsibility principle for well-designed blocks. Students build reusable procedures such as a Draw Square block and a Draw Polygon block, compose them into a small block library, and practice refactoring existing scripts into custom blocks. It builds on the computational thinking ideas from Chapter 1, the scripting foundation from Chapter 3, and the drawing work from Chapter 6. After completing this chapter, students will be able to design, name, and reuse their own custom blocks instead of repeating code.

Concepts Covered

This chapter covers the following 18 concepts from the learning graph:

  1. Custom Block
  2. Make A Block Feature
  3. Block Definition
  4. Block Name
  5. Procedural Abstraction
  6. Function Concept
  7. Procedure Concept
  8. Reusable Procedure
  9. Calling A Block
  10. Block Body
  11. Single Responsibility
  12. Well-Designed Block
  13. Draw Square Block
  14. Draw Polygon Block
  15. Block Library
  16. Composing Blocks
  17. Nested Custom Blocks
  18. Refactoring A Script

Prerequisites

This chapter builds on concepts from:

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