As teachers face the challenge of competing with screens while managing classroom behaviors, it is imperative that we adapt to the fast paced, technology rich environments that our students are growing accustomed to across settings while still providing strong academic instruction.
As a Digital Learning/Media team serving the K-5 population in rural North Carolina, we are striving to arm educators with hands-on technology based tools that will connect academic standards and student engagement. Participants in this session will use Bee-bots and Spheros Bolts. They will be given specific lesson examples tied to instructional standards that touch on areas of literacy, math and more. Participants will be given opportunities to execute some of the examples shown through the hands-on use of robotics.
One engagement activity will be to create CVC words by pulling letters and phonemes. Participants will program their Bee-bot to travel on the mat to the newly created word.
Another hands-on activity will use Spheros Bolts to recount major events in a text. Participants will find events in a simple text, then create an algorithm to put the events in order, and lastly, program their Bolt to travel the path.
Both hands-on activities combine the use of robotics and literacy to create high student engagement that facilitates the acquisition of core academic skills while teaching students basic coding terminology and algorithmic thinking.
