Tag Archives: STEM

Programmers of the future?

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What a busy day we’ve had in P2/3 today – our first school swimming lesson of the year and learning how to code for the afternoon!

There was a lot of excitement this afternoon as we got the chance to work in pairs and try to write a code for our very own robots! After discussion and onboard demonstrations on how to make their robot change it’s appearance, make a sound and move, the pupils were set off to see if they could write their own code. We then shared this with the rest of the class.

There was a lot of learning that took place and because it seemed like a game (with the use of a robot) the class took it all in their stride and did amazingly well – I’m very proud of them all!

We were working with the Makeblock Codey Rocky robots which uses a Scratch platform. This is a great way to introduce young or old into coding as it uses a simple block based system which is very easy to understand and provides a quick result. Not only was every group able to get their robot to perform the three key actions that we had learned but they could all present their code to the class and explain what they thought it should do. They were also able to share this onto the big screen from their iPad by discovering the ‘screen mirroring’ option!!

 

We are all looking forward to developing our coding skills further in the future!

Our first try with the laptops

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Today P2/3 ventured up to the ICT Suite to use the laptops. There was much excitement, as for many this was their first time.

Yesterday they were split into 5 groups, each group focusing on researching information for 1 food group. They then wrote this up in their own words and today we were going to learn how to put this into a word document!

The whole class worked so well to ensure that they were able to listen to the instructions clearly – there were a lot of new words and actions introduced today. Everybody was able to open a word document, use capital letters, spaces and full stops and change to a new line. Some were even able to look at changing the font of their text and it’s size. At the end of their session we looked at saving our document in our very own folder on the school network.

Considering this was their first trip to the ICT Suite they did a fantastic job and worked well on ensuring that they were not interrupting the classes next door. A lot of learning took place today and I’m very proud of what they have all been able to achieve – well done to all in P2/3!