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Programs for Talented Youth

Summer SAVY Session 5, Day 3, Programming and Robotics

Posted by on Wednesday, July 19, 2023 in blog, SAVY.

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 the difficult puzzles.

Then, we started our journey to conquer conditionals. This process requires problem solving using sequential true/false statements. We played a card game that had rules written in conditional format. To do this we practiced “if…then…” statements and added more conditionals with “if….else….” Such as “If (red card drawn) your team gets a point. Else (red card not drawn) other team gets a point. This is an advanced skill that can be difficult to pick up. I am really proud of the perseverance I have seen while working on puzzles with conditionals.

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 this session. The groups have chosen to build either a cat robot, human like robot, or fork lift 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