Summer SAVY, Session 5 Day 2, “Intro to Coding” (1st-2nd)
Each day will have a theme, which will incorporate another academic discipline into the lessons. Yesterday, our interdisciplinary connection was geometry. Students wrote code to draw or outline shapes. Today’s connection is to biology and ecosystems. The coding objectives for today were to learn how to program lights and sounds. During our morning meeting, we reviewed yesterday’s vocabulary (draw, block, debug, direction, speed, duration) and added definitions to vocabulary cards. Our read-aloud was The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry. Students noticed the animal and plant species in the illustrations. We talked about the food web for the rainforest and discussed the transfer of energy between biotic factors in the ecosystem.
Students used National Geographic Kids online to research specific species in their ecosystem. Each child picked one animal and drew a picture on a card with prey listed on the back. Each ecosystem group constructed a food web on the floor with their plant/animal cards and colored tape. They arranged the species to show the transfer of energy in the ecosystem. This afternoon, they synthesized yesterday’s coding instruction with their new knowledge from this morning to write code for Sphero to model the food web. Each student created a matrix animation of their species. They added the sound for the species. Then, they wrote code to make Sphero move to the predator to show the transfer of energy. Each group worked as a team to combine their code to follow the lines of the entire food web. They did a great job completing this task with their team!
I’m going to highlight one coding center in each blog post. Today’s center of the day is code.org. Code.org is a free resource that teaches computer science foundation skills. The program used at our code.org center is the “Sprite Lab.” Students work with a partner to design a character (sprite). Then they program movements and a background for their characters. Code.org has many other free games and lessons you can try at home.
Extension Activities for Home:
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Do a scavenger hunt in your house to find devices that have lights and sounds (microwave, laptop, toys, etc.). Ask your child what the function of the lights and sounds are. Talk about the fact that a program designed the device/machine to function in the way that it does.
- Ask your child to tell you about the food web their group created. Challenge them to think of two other species that could have been in the web.
