PUBLISHED 05 March 2020
Last week in the Preparatory school the children in all classes were treated to a Lego coding workshop run by Engineering 4 kids.
The younger children, in Reception and Nursery, got to build a Duplo steam park with moving attractions! An important skill for them was following the step by step instruction cards so that their machines worked. Years 1 and 2 made Lego robots that were named after famous designers/ engineers for example James Dyson, by working in mixed age groups to follow the steps then writing a simple code to make the robots move.
The key Stage 2 classes all had to programme the robots to navigate mazes that had been laid out on the hall floor. Using their coding skills, they had to make the robots go forwards, stop, turn and reverse. For each year group there were new challenges and expectations. There was an interesting discussion about why humans need robots and what the future of this technology might be. For some children the most important learning was all about working collaboratively with their classmates on a practical problem that required a great deal of tenacity to solve.
The workshop was a brilliant example of how Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths can all feature in a single project, making learning effective and fun.
Here is what some of the children had to say…
“The best thing was I found out that it was interesting when the robot moved” Zach (Year2)
“The best thing was driving the robot” Ella (Year 2)
“The best part of the coding was trial and error, putting in the right lengths on the laptop then testing and correcting if it was wrong. “Myles (Year 6)
“The best part for me was trying to get the right measurements for it to work and do the maze right” Anna (year 5)
“I liked the wobbly see-saw on my model” Sonny (Reception)