And So It Begins...

My colleague Dianne Dreef came to me about a year ago with an idea of trying to incorporate coding/robotics into Grade 9 Math and Science.  The reason: kids are going to need to beable to code in almost every career path. 

Here we are, one year; a TLLP (Teacher Learning and Leadership Program) grant; and a team of 6 educators later, we are off and running.  Our team now includes Debbie Lisak, Jessica Barton, Jessica McGregor, and Louise Vaillancourt.  Debbie is a fellow Math teacher, Jessica and Jessica are Science teachers, Dianne and Louise are both Instructional Coaches with our school board.

When we started the TLLP process, we knew we wanted to purchase Chromebooks and so we ordered those in June to make sure we had them for September.  We also purchased a couple of Ozobots, Makey Makey's and we had some Microbits from a Kids Code Jeunesse workshop. We also planned to use the release time in first semester to research lessons, try out different peripherals and then focus on including coding and robotics in second semester.

At our first meeting in September, we took some time to play with the technology.  It was after that meeting that Debbie and I thought: we shouldn't wait, let's get going!  We can try some things this semester that will help inform us for second.  We thought of altering one of our current lessons to fit the available technology.

Based on our course plan, we were moving from investigating interior and exterior angles in polygons to working with 2D shapes.  We often start with a Dan Meyer 3-Act Task using bubble wrap.   It is a fun activity, but we thought that that this would be a perfect opportunity to use Ozobots to try to do the same thing.  I spent a couple of hours working with the Ozobot and thinking of ways of trying to get the Ozobot to "fit" the lesson.  After trying many things with the Ozobots -  movements, speeds, turns, flashing lights, a number of questions rolled through my head:

1. Why am I trying to have the technology fit the lesson instead of using the technology to plan a lesson?  
2. Why do we need to do that lesson?  Why can't we do something else?

Debbie and I discussed this and we both said "Lets just code!".  We can code something to do with shapes, something that will introduce Scratch, but also get them thinking about shapes.  At first I thought we should do something with area and perimeter, or composite shapes, but really we needed to play around with shapes and Scratch and that is when the lesson unfolded...  Let's make it simple and just get them to draw shapes.  I had played around with Scratch before, but hadn't really thought of how the movements of the Sprite involves angles.  As I was trying to draw the various shapes, I realized that we needed exterior angles to define the amount the Sprite needed to turn.

The lesson became: let's get them to draw polygons and then, if time, see if they can draw composite shapes, incorporating where we came from and where we are going.

I was a little nervous as I wasn't sure how many had coded in Scratch before and after a quick survey, it turns out about 85% of the class had coded before.  This meant I could shorten the "Tour of Scratch" and give students a more time in class to work on their own.  Our tour consisted of:

1. Moving the Sprite 50 steps when the Green Flag is clicked
2. Doing that a few times to recognize that the Sprite moves from it's current location.
3. Moving 50 steps then turning 90 degrees
4. Putting the pen down, moving 50 steps and then turning 90 degrees
5. Then clicking the Green Flag 3 more times to make a square

Their task, when the tour was done, was to draw as many regular polygons as they could starting with a triangle. When I started to circulate, all of the students were engaged and trying to think through the problem.  Most making the same mistake I had made when turning the Sprite, I used interior angles instead of exterior angles.  Once they figured this out, I showed them the "repeat" block so that all they need to do was change values in 2 of the blocks to create the rest of the shapes.

Comments I heard: "I did it!!!"; "This is really cool"; "Hey, I can make any polygon"; "Wait, how do you draw a circle?"; "Let me try".

Reflecting on the lesson, I have to say this was the most engaged I have seen my three grade 9 class so far.  My new thought:  how do we continue the engagement?  I am now trying to look through our course plan to figure out where we can incorporate coding or robotics in the lessons.  

And so it continues....