Grade band:  Elementary School (Grade 5)

Subject Area: General Science

Purpose: 

• • Learning Objective:  Students will be able to design, build, and program a simple robot to complete a task, while explaining how changes in code affect the robot’s movement and performance.

  • Applicable Common Core Standard:  CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.5.1: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly. This fits well because students must plan, test, revise, and explain their robot design with a partner or group.

  • Real-World Application:  This lesson will give students the opportunity to collaborate on design, engineering, and programming tasks.

Activities:  Students will work in small groups of 2-4 to design, build, and program a simple robot to complete a specified task.

• • Warm-up discussion: Ask students what they think robots do in real life and how robots can solve problems for people.

  • Problem phase: Students are given a specific problem to solve, such as moiving their robot through or a course or around obstacles to comlete a manipulative task (lift, move, knock down, etc.)

  • Design phase: Students choose components from their kits and design the robot they think will help them complete the problem.

  • Build phase: In small groups, students assemble a basic robot using the kit and test its basic functions.  As needed, they will revise their design and modify their build.

  • Code phase: Students program the robot to move within a drfinrd course and manipulate the object as described in the problem.

  • Test and revise: Groups test the robot, identify problems, and improve both the build and the code until they successfully complete the problem.

  • Share out: Each group explains their design choices, what they observed, and the outcome of their attempt to solve the problem.

Equipment Required:

• • Robotics kit such as LEGO Education, VEX GO, Dash, or similar

  • Tablet, Chromebook, or computer with coding software or app to program robot

  • Masking tape to mark boundaries and zones

  • Small object to manipulate, such as a cube, pom-pom, or paper cup

  • Templates for design, program, and observation

Grade Band: High School

Subject Area: English Language Arts

Purpose: 

• • Learning Objective:  Students will be able to write natural-language instructions that a robot or automation can carry out to complete a complex task.  Students will also learn to communicate accurate feedback to inform revisions to instructions.

  • Applicable Common Core Standard:  CC.1.4.11–12.A Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately.

  • Real-World Application:  This lesson will help students achieve clarity through deliberate and consistent use of terminology while promoting analytical thinking, teamwork, and problem-solving skills.

Activities:

• • Students will work in 2-person teams either in separate room or on opposing sides of a visual barrier.

  • Student A will communicate the task the robot needs to perform to Student B, who will write the instruction for the robot to follow.

  • Based on the results of each trial, Student A will communicate what needs to be changed, and Student B will issue a new set of instructions.

  • When a task is successfully completed, the students will switch roles and a new task will be assigned.

Equipment Required:

• • Identical LEGO Mindstorms Robots 

  • Robot instruction interface

  • Robot instruction manual (glossary of commands)

  • Identical objects to retrieve or manipulate