Robotics in Reading

I am so excited about this post!

One of my passions is STEAM and technology in the classroom. I was able to get Dash and Dot Robots through a Donors Choose project for Maker Space.

To start, these are great robots for elementary. There are several different apps available for them to code, move the robots, control sounds, and complete challenges.

However, I knew I wanted to find ways to use the robots in core subjects. Our first project was a book report.

The focus of the book report was to create a storyline that the robot would follow. Once the storyline was made, the students could code the robot to follow the path of the storyline, adding words or symbols to represent events from their book.

I loved that this gave students the opportunity to show their comprehension of their story and practice coding a path that they created themselves.

I created a product on Teachers Pay Teachers for you to use. It includes all of the planning and drawing pages that we used, as well as detailed instructions and Common Core alignment. I also included several rubrics depending how you want to grade it. I think that it works best to give two separate grades, one for reading and one for science. This way you can be sure that the overlap does not negatively affect student grades in a subject. Their coding grade is mostly based on their effort, as many of my students are all at different places with their coding. Check out the product here!

The students really enjoyed this project because it was something different that combined reading and science in a very interactive way. I loved seeing them so engaged and incorporating two of my favorite things as well.

I am working on adapted versions for other types of robots as well, so check back for those and let me know if there are any types that you want to use this with! If you don't have robotics in your classroom, maybe a project like this is perfect to convince administration that they are useful!