The Arizona STEM Acceleration Project

Little Programmer

Little Programmer

A 2nd grade STEM lesson

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Richard Quinonez

June 21,2023

Notes for teachers

Vocabulary

Code/ Coding

Command

Debugging

Forward

Function

Left

Loop

Program/ Programmer

Right

Robot

Sequence

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List of Materials

• Checkerboard or something with squares
• Plastic animals/ Build your own
• If building your own use googly eyes
• Command Cards ( directional Arrows)

Googly eyes, markers, tape, balls, pipe cleaners, other items to design your game piece.

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Standards

K-2.4.c. Students, with guidance, use a design process to develop ideas or creations, test their design, and redesign as necessary.

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Standards

Standard 4. Innovative Designer - Students use a variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve problems by creating new, useful or imaginative solutions.

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Objectives:

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Students will learn how to program a robot to do the commands they tell them to do.

Students will move the robot from a starting position to a target position.

Students will learn terms to move including forward, right, left, back.

Agenda ( 1 Hour Design/ 1 Hour Code )

Get into pairs

Build your game pieces… You will design and engineer a monkey and three bananas.

Design a code that can be solved by your classmates. Make a start and finish point. Strategically place the banana pieces in three spots. The Programmer will challenge the coder trying to figure out your code.

* Place code on index card so students can check their answers to make sure their path is correct.

Once your path is coded try to solve another groups code.

* You will write down each code and if you have the ability to record, Record your code while explaining your coding process.

If you have the ability use your ipad to make an iMovie. Students can give presentations on how they came up with their code to solve their board.

Coding

• You are a computer programmer giving a computer step by step instructions. You will be programing a code giving the computer simple commands to be carried out by the computer. You are completing a program that will be executed by the (computer). Then you will go through the program checking for bugs ( errors). To fix the bugs you have to go through the code and debug it, finding errors, to ensure the program works.

Intro/Driving Question/Opening

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Robot Richard needs to feed his monkey. He must use simple commands to find three bananas as fast as possible to feed his monkey. Students must map out a code for Robot Richard, to follow, to capture all three bananas. Students will use a check board as the grid. Students will use direction cards like forward, backward, left, right arrows to map out the path. Once students have mapped out the path they will use their monkey to make sure their code is correct.

First:

Build your monkey/ banana piece.s

Design a challenging path that can be coded.

Then write your code as an answer to be solved

You will then try to solve your classmate’s code. You will record your process solving the code. Check your code to make sure you have the correct answer. Have students turn in at three codes solved.

Hands-on Activity Instructions

• Students will make there monkey out of a egg carton slot.
• Students can customize using makers, Googly eyes, pipe cleaners.
• Once finished building your game piece place the piece on the checkerboard.
• Code the monkey using the command arrows.
• When students have completed the sequence of commands they must test the code for bugs. ( make sure it works)
• If any bugs are found make sure the bug is fixed before we have another student fix it.
• There will be more than one code and not every code will be the same size.

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Assessment

To assess your abilities turn in three codes that you have solved. If you have a recording device. Record at least one code that you solved. Talk through the code. Then you might want to do an iMovie presentation to share with a group/ class.

Differentiation

Younger or less advanced children you can keep the game pieces closer together so the codes do not require too many steps.

Older students can do advanced skills adding loops or functions to get more creative in their code.

Functions and loops might be good to take out multiple steps in your code.

Example having five forward cards maybe combined into one loop card with 5 forwards.

Remediation

Extension/Enrichment

For more advanced students let them get creative. Add more steps or additional rules. For example: Rule one might be no right turns. Rule two might be must go backwards. These additional extensions will require additional rigor.