Summer SAVY Session 4, Day 3, Programming and Robotics
Day 3: What a day of programming! We have filled our brains with new vocabulary this week and it is imperative to use it while we code, so we started with a review. Then, we continued reading The Wild Robot Escapes by Peter Brown to inspire futuristic thinking for the rest of the day. Developing functions within our programs was the skill we added to our coding knowledge today. To do this, we learned that a function is similar to writing the word “chorus” in lyrics. The students had to define the chorus of popular Disney songs and relate it to using the functions block while coding. They were excited to code with Minecraft today and use functions to complete coding puzzles. The programmers are really pushing their critical thinking skills to the max and showing perseverance when working through difficult puzzles.
This afternoon we studied Margaret Hamilton who is an eminent person in the field of programming. She led a team to develop the program for the Apollo moon missions. We read an article about Margaret in Beanz magazine to find the skills other than coding that Margaret needed to be successful. After watching a video about her experience programming the Apollo missions, we debated the question, “Was debugging the most important part of the Apollo missions?”
The day concluded with the groups continuing to build their Lego Boost. The programmers built features on the robots before they programmed them to move. I love that we have such a wide variety of robots in this session. The groups have chosen to build either a guitar robot, a human-like robot, a forklift robot, or a factory robot. I am excited about all of the different engineering features we will have to present at the end of this week.
Tonight, ask your programmers:
- What are the benefits of using functions?
- What was one puzzle on code.org that you struggled with today?
- What robot did your group choose to build this week?
Mrs. Wheelock