Robots and Coding Connections At Richmond Elementary School

This post was cross posted on the RES Enrichment blog and is written by RES enrichment teacher, Darcie Rankin (darcie.rankin@cesuvt.org ).

In December all students at Richmond Elementary School participated in an Hour Of Code during their enrichment classes.  This was an excellent chance for students to be exposed to the concepts of coding. After several years of Hour of Code at our school, as well as many teachers embracing coding for special projects in their classrooms over the last three years...students have developed great early coding skills.

This year I signed up to participate in the Vermont Robot Rodeo. My teaching goal was for students to have an opportunity to advance their coding skills as they made connections between hardware and software.  I feel that in elementary school the ability to connect coding to the physical manipulation of materials is an awesome way to build true and lasting understanding. I have also seen it increase student engagement as the sharing of results is so transparent (i.e. Robots roll across the floor or say something or react to something!)

This year I chose to focus the use of robots to build coding connections in our third grade classes(younger classes got exposure to the robots less formally).  We began our investigation by giving every student a chance to explore what robots could do. During this period, we might use apps that were more like a remote control versus coding and kids were encouraged to play.  After this exposure I challenged students to use coding applications to control the robots and to make them 'do something' deliberate and expected.  Students jumped right in to meet this challenge.  They used Blockly and Tickle applications and developed cool project ideas: making a robot draw something, dance to music, greet others, create a light show, interact with another robot, pull a toy on a path, make it through an obstacle course...to name a few!  They wrote many lines of code, tested and iterated to achieve their goal, worked together and had a lot of fun.  Several students pointed out that this work was hard....but not because they wanted  to stop.....but I think they were just proud of themselves! And I was proud of their persistence and drive to learn.

Kindergarten getting early exposure to coding skill through maze building and BeeBot

Third Graders putting their coding skills to the test!

The Vermont Robot Rodeo is an amazing opportunity to expose students to these coding connections and we are grateful to all of the sponsors who provided funds to give our kids the chance to advance their coding skills. We will be sad to send Dash and Dot to the next school--but we are sure that they will learn as much as we did--and we will be watching and checking out their work too.

I look forward to watching as our RES students use all of the skills they developed and applying this same persistence, thinking and collaboration to other learning.

Below is a video that hilights student work with robots, coding examples and student reflections.

Richmond Elementary Says GoodBye to Cubelets!

Students at Richmond Elementary School (RES) had a great month exploring Cubelets.  Students in Grades K -4 had a chance to explore them through after school programming as well as during school choice times and in the enrichment classroom.  We decided not to name the robot...as each time we built it, it seemed to have a different personality.  We wonder if the next school will come up with a great name?!

Here are a few helpful hints from our time with the Cubelets (we also included these on cards to travel with the robot):

*  There are some great lesson plan links at:  http://www.modrobotics.com/education/#lesson-plans

*  We used the following video (short and sweet) to give students an idea of the various ways the could manipulate the six Cubelets (and to challenge them to think beyond these seven ideas!) Students enjoyed how each robot had a name and they paused the video and tried many of the ideas:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uULIlZFD6uE

*  We found that with six Cubelets and one power source that it was challenging to have more than two students building a robot at a time.  (This was a challenge, because the building was so fun, and in high demand.....but if we added more students then no one got to follow an idea through to completion...especially the first week!)
    *  One way we addressed this was by having Legos and the Lego extenders in a different space. This allowed students to build and design add on features while they were waiting to  build with the Cubelets.
    *  We explored the idea of having students draw designs out....but the creativity was more limited than if they built and tested directly on the Cubelets!

*  We had a flashlight accessible in order to further play with light sensor.  We also had a dark space in the classroom so students could move their designs in and out of the light without disrupting other class projects!

Overall we really enjoyed our time with the Cubelets, and students were sad to see them leave.  We are very grateful to the Vermont Robot Rodeo, and our sponsor Game Theory for this opportunity to learn and explore with a new tool!  We would love to add these to our classroom in the future, and are looking for ways to fund a kit of our own.

We are also excited to watch this blog and see what great things the next school creates.Happy Trails Cubelets!!! (Perhaps we will meet up again at Dynamic Landscapes??!)

Cubelets Explore the Halls of Richmond Elementary School

Students at RES have been having a great time with the Cubelets.  Last week a small group of first graders read about robots during their reading group.  They also had a chance to explore Cubelets as they filmed a series of shorts demonstrations of Cubelets in action throughout the halls of RES.  From the enrichment room, to the art room, the cafeteria and the gym....Cubelets were seen traveling our halls. At each stop classrooms, teachers and staff all watched our robot friend in action. Below is a quick 'movie trailer' of the Cubelets visiting RES.



We were also lucky to have Cubelets during our after school Coding enrichment class this month.  Twenty students in grades K -4 worked together to understand the connection between coding and robots.  Cubelets were a chance for students to see the direct result of changing inputs on the outputs as they built, and rebuilt their robot. This exploration was open ended and FUN!




We are so grateful to the Vermont Robot Rodeo for this opportunity!

RES Students Explore Cubelets

RES students have been enjoying the opportunity to explore using the Cubelets that we received as part of the Vermont Robot Rodeo. These magnetic blocks each have a different function and can be combined in many ways. We have not yet named the robot, as there are so many ways to use it!  Stay tuned for more updates.  

Cubelets Arrive at RES

Richmond Elementary School students were excited to receive our Cubelet robot today as part of our participation in the Vermont Robot Rodeo!  The first enrichment class of the day opened our new learning tool and then several classes throughout the day explored the possibilities for building and creating. We are excited to continue this exploration and several classroom teachers are thinking of ways to connect more learning this month.

Have you heard of Cubelets?  Do you have any questions for us? Do you have ideas of what we should build? We would love to share our learning so leave a comment and connect with us!