Integration, Innovation, and Iteration: A Robotics Scope and Sequence

A Grade 6 student fixing an EV3 robot

INTEGRATION, INNOVATION, AND ITERATION: A ROBOTICS SCOPE AND SEQUENCE OVER THE COURSE OF A STUDENT’S TIME at Nashoba Brooks School from Preschool to Grade 8, students will navigate a complex web of integrated literacy and technology skills that help them to better understand, decode, engineer, and create the world around them. At five different stages through the years, Director of Educational Technology and Innovation, Hank Bryant and Instructional Technologist, Rachel Parker use a host of robotic tools to help students develop high level skills in coding, critical thinking, problem solving, and engineering. The range and sequencing of skills students learn through robotics are hallmarks of the carefully devised and intentional transliteracy curriculum. The varied content and skills incorporated in the robotics scope and sequence also provide opportunities for students to develop important transferable skills in areas such as creative problem solving, collaboration, perseverance, and resilience, in an environment that is supportive, challenging, and fun.

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elements from other subject areas, the Bee-Bot tasks can also serve as exciting ways for students to develop independent skills and to show their knowledge across the curriculum.

ONE-TO-ONE SEQUENCING WITH BEE-BOTS Preschool students have their first experience with the concept of coding, by working with devices called Bee-Bots. These cute bee-like devices help students to understand key concepts like one-to-one correspondence and sequencing, where pressing a button one time leads to one block of movement across a designated grid. This simple and fun tool helps young students to understand the basic building blocks of coding and they come to understand how they can direct and manipulate commands to help the Bee-Bot follow the specific path they want it to take.

In addition to these early coding skills, the information services team works closely with teachers to integrate Bee-Bot programming into other areas of the curriculum.

Mr. Bryant explains how they can use the mat grid on which the Bee-Bots travel to support student learning in other areas: “Each square of the grid is equivalent to one press of a button on the Bee-Bot. To integrate this into the curriculum, we can add colors, letters, shapes, or numbers on these mats. When preschoolers are working with number recognition, we can ask students to program the Bee to move from its location to the number nine on the grid to reinforce their understanding of counting, estimation, and correlation. In Kindergarten, students reinforce core curriculum art skills by drawing buildings and placing them on the grids to create their own town for the Bee-Bots to navigate.”

As students move on to Grade 1, they will increase both the complexity and duration of their Bee-Bot sequences.

Instead of having just a few movements and directions, students will program five or six movements in multiple directions and come to understand how to maneuver their Bee-Bot effectively from point A to point B, while avoiding obstacles along the way. By integrating essential

FROM 2-D TO 3-D WITH LEGO® WEDO In Grade 2, students move into more tangible robotics that involve a little bit of engineering. They work with LEGO® WeDo robots, which are a simplified version of the LEGO® EV3 models they will use in Grades 5 and 6. The Grade 2 students follow a step by step guide to build their WeDo. This helps them to build their procedural knowledge and ability to carefully follow visual instructions. Students develop their early engineering skills and understanding of the core components needed to construct the robot and the foundational terminology of robotics. They also have the flexibility to add unique elements onto the core components, which encourages innovative thinking.

The WeDo is a big step forward in developing coding skills as students use iPads and blocks of code to program the robots. While Bee-Bots operate in a two dimensional grid, the WeDo is a more complex set of wires, motors, and parts that can move three dimensionally by going up and down hills, as well as in multiple directions for infinite durations. Students learn to manage the additional variables involved in moving the robots through three dimensional space and become increasingly skilled in manipulating blocks of code available to them to direct the robot’s actions.

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FORM AND FUNCTION WITH EV3 In Grade 4, students transition from iPads to computer based programming on Chromebooks and learn Scratch, a block-based programming language developed at MIT. The open source platform allows students to continue to develop their understanding of coding and practice writing complex coding formulas including conditionals, variables, and operators. In Grade 5, students expand their knowledge of the major component parts—motors, sensors, and wires—of all robots as they begin to expand their skills with the EV3 robots. When they get to Grade

IPAD-BASED BLOCK CODING WITH SPHERO The Sphero robot used by Grade 3 students looks like a ball, and its ability to move fluidly makes the students’ programming challenges more complex. At this stage, students do less free play and focus more on laying down multiple blocks of code to achieve specific tasks and overcome obstacles. In addition to thinking about the direction, speed, and duration of the robot, the Sphero’s turning radius also requires students to think about the angles of their turns. This really engages their mathematical thinking and requires them to problem solve with each task. A challenge might include going forward, around corners, reversing, traveling up a ramp with enough speed to make it down the other side, and then stopping before hitting a wall.

Mr. Bryant notes that navigating these challenges involves “a lot of trial and error, a lot of computational thinking, and a lot of problem solving.” The students need to consider speed, duration, and angles as they move the robot through a designated path. They make mistakes, adjust their coding, and run their sequences over and over again until they achieve their goal. The students come to understand this iterative process of trial, error, analysis, and adjustment as part of the natural course of working toward a goal. The support and guidance they receive from their teachers along the way, help students develop greater resilience and success.

The creative elements of changing the robots colors, adding noises, or adjusting how the robot responds when it collides with something gives the students a sense of ownership and agency in the process as well.

The introduction to block-based coding in Grade 2 is reinforced and refined as the tasks in the robotics curriculum become more complex and as students learn new programming languages in the Middle School.

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6, students apply this knowledge to consider how the form (the components needed to build a robot that can perform certain tasks) and the function (the desired tasks and challenges ahead) are intrinsically linked and need to be considered when engineering and coding the EV3. They also have the added complexity of creating a robot that can compete effectively in a “sumo robot competition.” The students have to build a robot that can work autonomously to compete against another robot in a sumo wrestling competition. Each robot tries to either push the other robot out of the ring, or incapacitate the robot in some way so that it can no longer compete.

The competition brings together a lot of the skills the students have been building. In the engineering stage of the process, they need to understand the task at hand and the components they need to achieve their goals.

For example, the robot needs to have a certain friction coefficient so it cannot get pushed out of the ring too easily, and it needs to have a way to displace the other robot by ramming, lifting, or spearing it. The students

research and review past competition videos to get ideas, and, through a process of trial and error, they build, review, and improve their robot’s capabilities over several weeks of informal practice rounds.

In the coding component of the challenge, the student’s are working with multiple sensors and motors. For example, students may choose to use three different sensors: an infrared “sight” sensor to detect the proximity of another robot, a color sensor to help the robot stay within the ring, and a touch sensor to help it know when it is being attacked. Each of these sensors needs to be programmed to help the robot respond properly in different situations. Similarly, students may use up to three different motors to direct the robot's movements and mechanisms for attacking competitors. “It’s a big challenge,” says Mr. Bryant, “they’re utilizing multiple sensors, motors, inputs, outputs, and different kinds of if/ then clauses in their code.”

Just like they did in earlier grades, students work in teams and use a design thinking approach to go through multiple iterations of their prototype. In this instance, however, they have noticeably more variables to factor in, and a more complex set of coding challenges to navigate.

They get the hands-on experience of what it takes to invent, innovate, and collaborate to achieve a desired outcome.

As in the Lower School, Middle School students learn and build on their coding and fabrication skills across various disciplines, even in the years they are not working specifically with the robots. For example, in Grade 7 English, students learn to code using Twine as a fun way to expand and enhance their understanding of the hero’s journey in fiction writing (see page 13 to read about this exciting assignment).

CODING, ENGINEERING, AND PROBLEM SOLVING WITH VEX The VEX robot competition in Grade 8 is a culmination of all the skills that students have learned throughout their years at Nashoba Brooks. The VEX system has the most detailed set of components and presents the biggest constructing and engineering challenge to date. The tasks that the robots perform in the competition also mirror real world situations where robots might be needed. The competition places two robots in a designated field where the robots try to move small green balls or large orange footballs into positions that score points. “Essentially, there are three ways you can score,” Mr. Bryant explains, “one way is by pushing the balls through a low gateway to the other team’s side of the field. Another way is by lifting the footballs, which cannot be pushed through the gateway, up and over the wall. The third way is by lifting one of the small circular green balls and carefully placing it into a tall basket. The more difficult the task, the more

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points the team scores, so students can choose multiple ways to approach this project and different strategies to compete.”

Similar to the Grade 6 challenge, students collaborate in teams and work through multiple iterations tweaking both the physical capabilities of, and strategies for their robots, even before they enter the competition field. They also consider real world examples of robot use, like the sunfish robot in Fukushima, Japan which was developed to assist with clean up after the meltdown of a nuclear power plant. The robot was designed to withstand radiation, steer through tight crevices, grasp materials, and transport them safely—all in an area that the technicians could not access. In the same way, the Grade 8 students design their VEX robots to compete in a space they have not seen, and once they get to the practice rounds, they have to confront and adjust to the realities

of the actual environment the robot has to navigate.

Perhaps the robot’s grasping mechanism is too large to grasp objects in confined spaces, or maybe the turning radius is not nimble enough for the small competition field.

In addition to the engineering and programming challenges, the Grade 8 students also have to learn to pilot their robot through the competition field, just like the technicians in Fukushima or the pilots of the Mars rovers. Mr. Byant notes, “there's the programming side and then there's the actual driving, and they're not the same set of skills. You might have a group that designed their robot beautifully, but then couldn't execute in terms of moving it around the space. Or a team with a robot that was not as well designed, but because they could manipulate it well, they performed better.” The Grade 8 teams have a host of challenges to face at every stage of the VEX process, not the least of which is finding ways to leverage their individual strengths in designing, programming, or piloting, to benefit the group as a whole.

Mr. Bryant observes that it can take groups a long time to figure out how to capitalize on their strengths, “but the groups that get there the quickest have the smoothest ride through.”

CORE VALUES Successful communication and collaboration are key elements for finding success in the Middle School robotics challenges, and they are important learning outcomes for the program. While the students are developing important coding knowledge and engineering skills through robotics, the program is also geared toward building students’ resilience. Throughout the curriculum, students may confront opposition and difficulties, or fail to complete a specific task or challenge. At every stage, they learn how to respond to these difficulties and to use them to their advantage. “Therefore we're saying that not only is failure okay,” Mr. Bryant explains, “but it's something that we are actually looking for to help us improve. Taking this perspective on failure really helps the students to embrace it a little bit more and build on their resilience through this process.” It is no accident that two of the School’s core values—resilience and collaboration—are such prominent elements of the robotics scope and sequence. As with all areas of the Nashoba Brooks curriculum, the School seeks to teach students both the academic and life skills they will need to find their way in the world.

Twine’s story mapping process

BEYOND ROBOTICS...CODING THE HERO’S JOURNEY IT BEGAN AS A ZOOM MEETING. Late in the fall, Mr. Bryant, Nashoba Brooks’ director of innovation and technology reached out to the new Grade 7 English Teacher, Mr. Stephens, hoping to continue a now fiveyear tradition of collaboration. The Twine program allows students to create virtual storyboards using HTML and CSS coding languages. Their stories contain choices and use multiple variables, which allow players to change the ultimate outcome of the tale. This year, Mr. Stephens suggested combining his Hero’s Journey unit with the online storyboarding challenge.

Students went through Joseph Campbell’s famous steps, learning about the call to adventure, the passage into the unknown world, the ordeal, and the rest of the heroic story cycle. They then put pen to paper, writing their own heroic journeys. These stories served as a jumpingoff point for the playable, Twine version of their stories, which took the seventh graders two weeks to construct.

“I was able to combine two things that I enjoy: writing and code. I had already used Twine on my computer at home, and it was fun to learn more about it,” Zoe explained when asked to tell what she found most interesting. Zoe’s story, about an unfortunate skateboarder named Mike who ends up finding a portal to another dimension, was perfect fodder for a Twine conversion. But Zoe also explained the difficulty of

changing a linear, kinetic story, to one with choice: “We turned a normal story into a ‘choose your own adventure story.’ In most stories the ending is happy, but here, we had to add ways that the main character could fail.”

“The way we put our writing into storyboard format helped me understand how I wrote each part of my story.” And the failing was epic. Students created all sorts of potholes for their characters (and the players) to fall into. The other positive impact of introducing failure was the “stretching” of their original story. Charlotte was one who saw how this storyboard manipulation helped clarify the writing process: “The way we put our writing into storyboard format helped me understand how I wrote each part of my story.”

Students also used HTML to introduce variables— objects characters could take with them, like a key for a door or a wetsuit for the ocean. The decisions players encountered as the stories progressed were easy to see in Twine's block-based storyboarding view.

Charlotte explained how they reaped the reward of this new digital literacy: “I loved how interactive this project was, it combined things we are interested in with writing.

This was definitely the most fun I've ever had doing a graded English project!”