Summer SAVY 2018: Session 6, Day 4 – Programming and Robotics (Rising 3rd/4th)
Dear Parents,
Happy Thursday! Only one more day with your awesome children and we will be sad to see them go. We had a productive day today learning more vocabulary, advancing with our code.org lessons, and programming our robots. We began the morning with a live demo. I did this to show the students how we can write code efficiently using vocabulary and skills that we have learned in class. We created shapes and cool patterns using loops, repeats, and functions. The students were even exposed to a little bit of math when calculating shape lengths, sides, and angles. The live demo helped the students by allowing them to see how an experienced programmer uses the tools from class to create what they envisioned. The students had many opportunities to ask questions, discuss ‘what ifs’ with each other, and change parts of the code to create different shapes and patterns.
Later in the day and after lunch, we talked about events and we played a game where the teacher pressed or turned a button and the students had to do a corresponding movement. This represented how an event, such as a mouse click or pressing the keyboard, creates an action. We practiced using events when we went to the computer lab, where the students created their very own version of Flappy Bird. Parents, I encourage you to ask your children how this went! Did they change anything from the original game? How did they do this? How did they use events in their program?
While in the computer lab, the students also worked with sprites and began creating their own projects using all of the skills they learned previously. The students started a variety of projects including: create-your-own adventure stories, videogames, patterns, etc. All of the students did a great job staying focused to complete their projects in a timely manner. They are excited to show the parents their creations.
Finally, we finished off the day working on our Sphero robots. The students began to program their own projects and they also programmed the robots to get through several different mazes.
We are looking forward to more learning and exploring with the students tomorrow! We can’t wait for the students to show the parents everything that they have been working on. Parents, continue to ask your children about their final projects!
Thank you,
Mr. Hamid and Miss Ashanti
More Sphero Programming
