M4-Field Activity

Lesson plan published in SCOPES

Reflection M4-Field Activity

• During this Field Activity, I collaborated with the Fab Lab assistant to better understand how the Arduino and joystick function together. This support helped me build confidence in connecting components and programming the joystick to send input to the computer, where messages are displayed. His guidance also helped me anticipate challenges and ensure the activity is appropriate for elementary students. At the same time, I drew from my experience teaching literacy methods to design a lesson that connects storytelling and decision-making. By linking joystick movements to different story outcomes, I created an interdisciplinary lesson that helps students understand how choices affect narratives in an engaging, hands-on way.

• One anticipated challenge is balancing the technical component with the literacy objective. Some students may feel more confident with storytelling, while others may engage more with the hands-on technology. To address this, the lesson includes scaffolds such as modeling, prewritten code, and guided joystick setup. Another challenge is ensuring active participation during group work. This is addressed by assigning roles such as builder, storyteller, and presenter. To support diverse learners, the lesson also includes sentence frames, visual supports, and multiple ways for students to share their understanding. 

• This lesson falls under the interdisciplinary level because it integrates literacy and physical computing into a single experience. Students use the joystick to represent choices and see how those choices lead to different outcomes displayed on the computer screen, making cause-and-effect in stories more concrete. To move toward a transdisciplinary level, the lesson could shift to a real-world application, such as creating an interactive decision-making guide for the playground or classroom. Students would connect technology and storytelling to real situations by using joystick directions to show different choices and outcomes. 

• AI was used to help me think through the feasibility of integrating physical computing into an elementary-level lesson, particularly in balancing the technical components with literacy objectives. I also used it to develop a structured group worksheet.

• To evaluate the lesson, I implemented it as a simulation with preservice teachers. Teacher candidates assumed the role of elementary students as they used a joystick to make choices that changed the outcome of a simple interactive story. After completing the activity, they discussed both the learner experience and ways to adapt the lesson for use in their own future elementary classrooms.

• The implementation provided valuable feedback about both the technology and the instructional design. Participants found the joystick highly engaging and noted that connecting physical movement to story outcomes made the concept of cause and effect more concrete. Pre-service teachers noted that the activity naturally promoted collaboration because students discussed possible choices before testing them with the joystick. They also appreciated how the lesson integrated literacy and computational thinking without requiring students to write code themselves.

• The simulation also identified several areas for improvement. Participants suggested spending additional time modeling joystick controls before beginning the storytelling activity and providing a completed story example to help elementary students better understand the expectations as they created their own interactive narratives.