Robotics Club

Robotics clubs started this week. This is our third year of offering after school robotics at Peak to Peak. The first year I took everyone who wanted to join. I had 35 students meet once a week and it was a train wreck. Even with parent volunteers, there were too many students trying to meet in a small space. That first year we made one mat and shared it amongst all the teams. Needless to say, our teams didn't complete the competition.

In year two, I offered two groups 3rd grade group and a 5th grade group. Each met on different days and I limited each to 10 students. We had 3 teams in each group. We purchased three mats and each group had access to the mat for the full time we met. Most of the teams completed all of the missions, and one team moved on the the "Perfect Score Round". The students had a great time and learned a lot about coding and teamwork.

This year, we have 3 different groups. The beginning group, mostly 3rd graders, will do the Wonder League competition in the 6-8 year old category. The intermediate group will explore Dash, Dot, Sphero and Ollie. They have chosen not to compete in Wonder League, instead choosing to do a variety of design and coding challenges without the pressure of competition. The advanced group, 4th and 5th graders, will compete in the Wonder League competition in the 9-12 year old category.

The advanced group met today. Many of the students did Wonder League challenges last year in th 6-8 year old group. Today we started with Mission 3 from last year's 9-12 year old competition. Because it was just a practice activity, the students worked in teams, but I stopped them several times to share their thinking with the entire group. It was so much fun to have them project their code on the screen, explain their thinking, and then run their code. The rest of the group were so respectful as they gave feedback, and got new ideas on how to modify their own code.

I loved hearing their aah ha moments as they watched another group's code. One group tried using an infinite loop as the basis of the code. As they projected it, I heard another group, comment, they used an infinite loop -- I don't think it will work because..... Then as they watched the code, that same group, had a second ahhh haa moment, and said... but wait, we could use a loop here.... The sharing of code was so powerful. Last year, during the actual competition I didn't have the groups share out their work. However, as a learning tool, it is amazing. The students are so much more reflective when they see different ways to approach the same challenge. Acknowledging and appreciating the divergent thinking really helps them to open their mind to new possibilities and to different ways to approach a challenge.

I'm excited to begin another year of after school coding and robotics.

#robotics #wonderleague