If you were to jump into our fifth-grade science classrooms this week, you’d be bouncing into a world of robotics. Around the room, students in small groups of two or three are hard at work with building their very own LEGO EV3 robots. They’re in the middle of the Fifth-Grade Robotics Unit.
Leading up to this project, the fifth-grade scientists completed a Coding Unit in the fall. Students enter Middle School with a wide range of programming knowledge, so they first cover the basics of coding before getting their hands on the 24 different robot kits in Middle School Science.
During the Coding Unit, they learned about careers in computer programming like being a web developer, a software quality assurance engineer, or a business intelligence analyst to name a few. They also got exposed to coding terminologies such as words like algorithm, script, and variable. Then, they turned to code.org to put some of their newly-acquired programming knowledge to practice. Specifically, they focused on mastering block coding since that is what their LEGO EV3 robots use. For block coding, programmers drag and drop blocks with different coding instructions to articulate certain actions to be conducted in their game, object, or story.
This week, a fleet of 24 EV3 robot kits are in the hands of our fifth-grade Rams under the guidance of Middle School Science Teacher and Maker & Robotics Coordinator Branson Lawrence and Middle School Science Teacher Kelly Long. The students are learning about the parts of the robot (i.e. the manipulator, the sensors, or the controller), different types of robots (mobile vs. static, humanoids, remote control vs. autonomous, etc.), and how the different robots are used. Check out some of their masterpieces below!
Next, bringing their robotics and programming skills together, students will be tasked with completing a space-themed mission. Using block coding, they’ll program the robots to complete certain tasks that our science teachers promise will be out-of-this-world. We can’t wait to see what our fifth-grade robot engineers accomplish next!