September

Week 1

During the first week of robotics, 5th and 6th graders set the tone for the year by reflecting on how they wanted their team to run. Returning members to the team thought about what worked from last year and what could be improved. Newer members to the team helped set team agreements and shared what they hoped to learn and accomplish in robotics.

On Friday and Saturday, the team planned, designed, and built a Rube Goldberg Machine. A Rube Goldberg machine is a machine which performs a simple task in a complex way using multiple simple machines. For this project the team was put in pairs, and each pair was tasked with creating a section of the machine which would ultimately water Coach Spils' plant. The pairs had to not only work together but also communicate with the pair designing the section of the machine before them and the pair designing the section of the machine after them. Through a lot of collaboration, communication, and trial and error the 5th and 6th graders were successful in watering Coach Spils' plant.

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Week 2

This week, students were tasked with designing and building a marble rollercoaster. In teams of 2-3, students designed a rollercoaster which would contain at least one loop and a few changes in level. The only materials allowed were insulation tubing, cardstock, and tape. Through this challenge students had to work as a team, be innovative, and collaborate; but also observed first hand, the difference between kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy. As well, the teams looked for ways to reduce friction and conserve energy to ensure their marble traveled through their entire rollercoaster.

On Saturday, students organized the brand new SPIKE Prime robot kits.

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Week 3

This week students used the LEGO SPIKE Prime and built Tacobot! Tacobot is a robot designed by the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy. We will be using tacobot for the next few weeks to review and learn some basic programming concepts before we get started preparing for the FIRST Lego League Challenge Regional.

Week 4

The 5th and 6th graders have officially started programming Tacobot. This year is all about developing the team's computational thinking and pushing the students to create increasingly complex algorithms but in a simpler way. The Middle Team has adopted Carnegie Mellon's robotics academy's curriculum which focuses far more on understanding the logic needed to create algorithms where the robot is making discrete and continuous decisions.

Introduction to Hub

Students learned about the SPIKE Prime Hub and how to program it to show designs, letters, and make sounds. The important concept for students was to ensure they were familiar will all parts of the hub of the robot, how to store programs on the hubs, and how to ensure they did not override an already stored program.

Program Flow

The sequential movement challenge helped students reflect on program flow; a concept students have been exposed to indirectly in past years in robotics but is being explicitly taught this year. For this challenge it was important students programmed their robot to complete all the tasks listed in the correct order. As well, students learned, through some trial and error, that a robot must complete one block of code before moving onto the next block. Students then learned how to program their robot to do two things at once so the robot would not have to wait for one block to be complete before moving onto the next.

Program Flow and Turning with Precision

This challenge was introduced at the end of Saturday's practice as a way to perfect the robot's 90º turns. For the regional competition precision is key and having to troubleshoot a 90º turn is time consuming. The team learned about how to find the arc of a circle which would then ensure their robot will always turn exactly 90º with very little trial and error.

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