Introduction
Future Ready Learning (FRL) is an initiative designed to prepare students through inquiry and project-based learning (PBL). My school has a curriculum for FRL that operates the whole year, but in the last quarter student learning culminates in an intensive week of special projects for students to apply what they have learned to solving new problems. This week occurred over the week of April 2-5. Teachers, staff, and volunteers joined together to guide students through the design process via various hands-on activities, emphasizing the four Cs of creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and communication.
I was asked to lead the LEGO Robotics activity for a group of 5th graders. Although I am a lifelong user of LEGOs, I was a stranger to robotics and reluctant to step into this opportunity. I had little experience with elementary students, but knew that the only way to overcome my fear was to gain experience and learn through doing (FRL principle modeled in action!).
A month before FRL week I took one of the LEGO SPIKE kits home to gain familiarity and plan out how to guide the PBL. Gaining experience with the tool was crucial to attaining the confidence to step into the room with the students. The LEGO SPIKE kits utilize a series of TECHNIC bricks and block coding on LEGO Education online to create and automate LEGO robots!
I chose a module for the students to follow which would teach them the basics of the SPIKE kit and the custom LEGO coding mechanism. Although I planned on the students predominantly learning through doing, I also created a lesson plan to outline my approach, goals, and structure my vision for each day. The creation of this lesson plan aided in calming my nerves and anxiety, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t apprehensive of FRL week. My role for FRL week would be to act as a guide through the design process and help the students think through their choices and decisions.
Before the students could learn how to create LEGO robots, the guide (me) needed to solve a problem of their own. Nine students signed up for the activity, but the school only possessed six kits. Knowing the student names ahead of time, and receiving input from the FRL coordinator, I set up and assigned students to pairs (and one triplet) prior to the start. This enabled me to hit the ground running and get the kits into the hands of the students as soon as possible.
Day 1
The plan for Day 1 was for the students to visit the LEGO Education website and follow the introductory steps that functioned as a walk-through on the various sensors and motors in the kit. Once that was complete, I directed the groups to work on a unit (the same one I worked through a month prior). The unit had instructions on building the robot, followed by a series of challenges for the robot to complete. My hope was that the robot would be complete by the end of Day 1, so that Days 2 and 3 could be spent learning how to code and work through the design process.
By the end of Day 1, most of the groups had completed their robot and were working on learning the LEGO SPIKE coding system to complete the first challenge. The challenge was a directive to have the robot roll forward, stop moving before it reached a block of LEGO bricks, lower its arm, and drag the brick backward. The students were engaged and worked collaboratively to build each robot, but I started to notice some issues by the end of class.
One pair contained a student that caught on very quickly, but because of his accelerated learning his partner became lost and disengaged after the robot was built. It was difficult for two students to view and work on the code together. A similar occurrence was happening in the triplet group. I was pleased to see the three of them working well together to build the robot, but one of them started wandering around the classroom towards the end of the allotted time when the coding began. I also detected that outside of two or three of the nine students, the rest were having difficulty understanding the LEGO coding system, as most had never done any coding of any type before.
The three issues summarized:
- A student in a pair not having the opportunity to learn because his partner was doing all the work
- A student in the triplet becoming disengaged because three students cannot view the same Chromebook code together
- A majority of the group being confused on how to go about coding
Despite these issues, I was pleasantly surprised at how well Day 1 went. The students completed what I had planned, they worked collaboratively, and several were trying to modify their robots to express their creativity. At this stage, I restricted their creativity in this area as I thought it best they learned how to code first without a custom build causing problems and requiring personalized solutions. Day 1 focused predominantly on the C’s of collaboration and communication.
Day 2
My focus for Day 2 was on solving the issues of Day 1.
I started off the day by gathering all nine boys together in a semicircle around me. Each was handed a print-out of the code I had crafted for my test robot. We collectively went through the code as I asked what various triggers and actions did. Then I demonstrated the robot in action! After the robot completed what I had coded, I asked the group if there were any changes they would make or improvements. In this way I modeled part of the design process through testing, iteration, and evaluation. We repeated this step several times to impart to the group that getting something right may take repeated tries, without me overtly stating as much.
Gathering the group for this short direct instruction time and modeling the design process took longer than I anticipated, but it was invaluable to progressing the group collectively past the hurdles they were facing. This small group time solved one of the issues and ensured each student understood the basics of the LEGO coding application and how to move forward.
To solve the other issues I took a risk. For the pair where one student was (mostly) doing all the coding, I asked him if he would be fine on his own. He was agreeable to it. Then I pulled the other student from that pair with the student from the triplet who was disengaged, and put them together as a new pair, because I had one last LEGO SPIKE kit available.
At first they were dejected, because they would need to build the robot all over again and felt they were behind. But 5th graders are resilient. Both boys quickly said, “at least we know how to build it and can do it faster.” They set to work on completing what I had directed them to do on Day 1.
At this point I had five groups total. Three of the groups understood the basics and I asked each group to come up with three challenges for their robot to complete. Once the ideas were brainstormed, each one selected a challenge to work on. Of the additional groups, one was new and building their own robot. And the last group was stuck.
I spent most of my time floating from one group to the next, but focused on the group having issues completing the initial challenge. For some reason, the robot would not move forward, only backward. The code was correct. I verified it as the important parts matched mine.
The challenges the groups chose were ambitious. Some would require advanced coding skills, and I knew they would not be able to complete them with the limited time we had with three days together. But I encouraged them to pursue their idea anyway. They needed to fail to learn. They needed to run into difficulty and be uncomfortable to be stretched. To push to their limits to find out just what they are capable of.
As Day 2 came to a close, I left on a high. Students were going through the design process. Students were learning through curiosity, creativity, and play. The two boys I had paired up at the beginning of the period had come alive and were collaborating together. Making that agile decision at the beginning of the session had empowered them to learn at their own pace!
Even though the last pair’s robot was still moving backwards with no resolution, at my prompting they had worked through a litany of testing, evaluating, and iterations to troubleshoot and strive towards fixing the issue. From what I had seen of how they were thinking compared to the other groups, I felt they possibly may have learned more than the others, even though their robot would not do what it was supposed to do. Sometimes we learn more from failure than from success.
It was awesome watching these 5th grade boys analyze and come up with creative solutions to problems!
Day 3
On the last day I kept it simple: keep working on one of the challenges each group had fabricated.
They were solving issues and innovating new ideas on their own. Almost too much so.
I worked more closely with the pair whose robot was stuck moving backwards, to no avail.
When I touched base with the other pairs though, I realized everything was descending into chaos.
Students were playing with the triggers and actions that produced sounds, willy-nilly. The sounds served no purpose in the design of the robot. It was just for fun.
Groups that were stuck on the prompt they selected shifted to a new prompt instead of trying to fix what wasn’t working.
One group had decided to see if they could code their robot to do one lap around their work table. I told them it was ambitious, but go for it! On Day 3 they partly completed it. The floor surface was giving several of the groups issues. It was carpet and the robots would veer off-course based on imperfections in the threads. When they told me their issue and that they had identified it was the carpet, I asked them to create another prompt to work on because we could not control the surface material.
And this is where the 5th graders struggled. They were not sure what else to work on. Coming up with a brand-new idea on Day 3 after they were unable to complete their first idea was demoralizing.
As the clock was ticking down, I realized it would be futile to work through the process with each group to create new prompts as they would not be able to work very long on them.
Thus part of what ensued the rest of Day 3 was in a way planned chaos. Students were not working through a formal design process, but they were playing. They were being creative. They were collaborating, even going from one group to the next and interacting with each other’s robots. They were exploring how the code worked, and when one student figured out how to do something cool they shared it with other groups. This was teamwork in action, beyond what I had hoped for.
Conclusion
Future-Ready Learning week was a lot of fun, both for the students and for me!
Not without challenges, but the students did work on the four Cs and elements of the design process.
It was not what I had envisioned, because the last day felt out of my control, but it embodied inquiry and learning through play. And these were concepts I had read about in the past year and wanted to see in action, especially under my oversight.
Major takeaways:
5th graders need more guidance and structure than what I was giving them and cannot simply be entrusted with a pure inquiry model.
If I were to do it over, I would make parameters for what the robots should accomplish and prepare a formal design worksheet for each group to outline their plan prior to coding it.
A little more direct instruction to work through coding concepts would also have aided the majority of the students. What I did on Day 2 was pivotal, but providing basic instruction for 5-10 minutes on Day 1 and Day 3 as well I think would have alleviated some of the issues that were occurring.
It also would have been helpful to have another adult with me. Although there were only nine students, needing to learn a new skill, new ways to integrate technology with building blocks and work through the design process, I was not able to commit the time with each group that each student needed to thrive. To her credit, the teacher sharing the room with me did assist with classroom management and I am grateful for her presence and watchful eye in keeping the students on track.
Too late, I finally discovered the issue with the reverse moving robot. It was the Chromebook the students used all week. When the students were saving their code to the robot, it would not actually download due to a device problem. In the future, I would confirm all the devices work with LEGO SPIKE ahead of time.
I also had a moment with a student who said he wasn’t very good at coding. I stopped and knelt with him to encourage him through the moment, but by myself I wasn’t able to provide the intervention that student required to work through the code at a slower pace. This aspect frustrated me. I desired to take the student aside and work 1:1 with him to teach him the basics of the LEGO coding, but with the other groups struggling and classroom management escalating I knew I could not devote the rest of the time to this one student, especially on Day 3.
Ultimately however, each group will be different. With a focus on inquiry and PBL, the guide must be able to pivot and be flexible and not beholden to a particular process or structure.
FRL not only aided students in growing and discovering new things, but also for myself as the teacher.
I became more confident in my ability to lead and teach.
I encountered some difficulty and challenges in classroom management but will be better able to anticipate and react to those in the future.
Teaching and leading in a classroom is centered on experience. No matter how many theories I read and glean, until I implement them myself, test, evaluate, change the design, and re-implement, ideas are just ideas. They need to be put into action.
Ideas beg to be implemented.
So what are you waiting for? Grab an idea. Put it into action. You never know where it may take you!