Students begin programming robots in grade 4K. We use block based programming for grades 1st-5th and push button/color tiles/path drawing programming in grades 4K-Kindergarten. The first year we did this, I had grade levels assigned to the following robots:
- 4K: BeeBOTS
- K: Indi Bots
- 1st/2nd: Dash Bots
- 3rd: MeeperBOTS
- 4th/5th: Sphero
This challenge combines engineering (build a town around a road/path) and coding (program your robot to navigate your path). We are fortunate enough to have a variety of robots so that each grade level is able to experience a different robot to code as they progress through the grades. If we had only a couple of robots, I’d still make it work, and tweak the level of difficulty (change the constraints and criteria).
If I was confined to having only ONE robot to work with for all grades, it would be one of these:
- Dash – because the robot grows with students as they age (path drawing coding, block coding)
- Indi – also because the robot grows with students as they age (color tile coding, block coding)
- Bolt – again, it grows with students as they age (path drawingn coding, block coding), however, I feel the app interface is more “mature” and not as easy to navigate – it could be done though
If I could ony pick ONE of the above, I’d pick Dash. I like that they are LEGO compatable.
Check out more videos and pictures by clicking the arrow below. You can also view and/or download my slide deck too!
This was a new challenge this year. We want it to be an annual challenge, so the following modifications will be made so that students are coding different robots each year:
- 4K: BeeBOTS
- K: Indi Bots (color tile coding)
- 1st: Dash Bots
- 2nd: Indi Bots (block coding app)
- 3rd: MeeperBOTS
- 4th: Sphero
- 5th: Ollie Bots
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