Full Steam Ahead

by Maureen Kennedy, Educational Technology Coach Grades 4-6, Commonsense Media Certified Educator -

This year, Primary students are introduced to Co-curricular Activities (CCAs) where they engage in a choice of activities offered by teams of teachers. CCAs enhance the curriculum and give students an opportunity to choose an activity that interests them.

One of the highlight activities in the first block for Grade 6 students is STEAM (Science, Technology, Entrepreneurship, Arts, Math). Grade 6 students who chose STEAM as their activity initially brushed up on their Scratch skills. Scratch is a programme developed by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to help students understand how programming works. Students work with bricks that activate or animate sprites (characters) and stages (backgrounds) in various ways. Most of our students are familiar with at least the basics of Scratch.

From there, another element was added that can be programmed by Scratch. Students were given WeDo Lego motors and sensors and learnt how to make them move using Scratch. Once they had understood how that could be done, they were given WeDo Lego construction kits and built models by reading schematic diagrams. That is when the real fun and problem solving began. The Lego models added a whole new and challenging dimension to Scratch programming. The next hurdle was to synthesise what they had learnt from Scratch with manipulating motors with sensors to make the models move in a certain way. Some students were able to work towards an even more complex set of parameters where they were able to not only program the Lego models to move, but create an interaction between the Scratch Sprite and the Lego model. You can view two videos by Grade 6 students, Sophia and Marthe, and Steve and Krishna.

Students persevered in their problem solving until they found a solution with the kind of determination that we don’t often see when they encounter difficulties. Well done to Grade 6 students who proved their engagement, high level thinking and commitment to problem solving and learning at large.