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How Hands-On Robotics Brings Science Lessons to Life

How Hands-On Robotics Brings Science Lessons to Life

Source: Getting Smart

It can be something of a challenge to incorporate hands-on learning into earth and life science units. For example, many life science units focus on looking at plants and animals and reading about their environments, leaving out the integral hands-on experience. As elementary STEAM educators, we have both developed tech-infused lessons, incorporating engineering and robotics, that increase student engagement and bring earth and life sciences to life. These projects are rigorous in teaching the subject at hand, and their playful side encourages collaboration both during and after the lesson.

The ‘Windy Day’ Project

In Barb’s first grade classes, STEAM lessons revolve around wind and weather. One example is the “Windy Day” project. We start by talking about science vocabulary. It’s first grade, so we focus on questions like what’s hot, what’s cold, what does wind feel like, and what does it look like outside?

To simulate a windy day, students use art materials like streamers and feathers and attach them to a KIBO robot. They code the robot by creating sequences of programmable wooden building blocks that have commands printed on them, and then use the robot itself to scan the blocks and start their program to recreate a windy day scenario. They sometimes include the robot’s sound module to record their own windy day sounds. They make silly sounds of wind rushing or record their voice telling the story of the robot’s windy-day experience. These recordings become part of their program.

The first time the robots come out, we set a timer, and they have two minutes to put it together with no directions. It’s amazing what first graders can figure out in two minutes! We intentionally don’t give every student their own robot. It’s usually three in a group, and everybody has a job. A lot of our work is about getting kids to know what it looks like to work as part of a group. Before the lesson, we go through strategies for how to make decisions as part of a group, and at the end, we ask them to reflect on why they built their KIBO the way they did, and why the program they coded made their construction look and act like a windy day.

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