The ninjas of CoderDojo Athenry are starting to get ready for a new challenge: to earn belts!

Like martial arts dojos, the CoderDojo movement award belts of various colours from white to black, in recognition of skill levels in different coding disciplines. One big difference, though: our belts are USB memory keys that you can wear on your wrist!

Two weeks before the day on which we will be awarding belts, we took time to explain the process the the ninjas. The Scratch Beginners can earn one of two possible belts:

1. White Belts for commitment and basic skills (based on attending for 5 weeks or more)
2. Yellow Scratch Belts for competence in Scratch programming

The Scatch Advanced group have the potential to earn Yellow or Blue Scratch belts, and the Python  Beginners have the potential to earn White or Yellow Python belts.

To earn a Yellow Belt, you have to first be eligible for a White Belt. You also have to write a program in advance, and explain aspects of it to the mentors on the day, in order demonstrate your knowledge of Scratch programming concepts such as:

• Loops (FOREVER or REPEAT blocks)
• Decisions (IF blocks): for example, testing if one sprite is touching another or a colour, or testing the value of a variable
• Variables
• Animation and sound
• Sprites controlled by keyboard or mouse
• Other features such as Broadcasts and speech bubbles are good to have too.

Here are the presentation slides from the day, in PDF format: CDA-S2-Challenge08-PrepareForBelts.pdf

If you would like us to send you these slides in PowerPoint format, feel free to get in touch on Twitter or via the comments!