Beebot Goes to the Olympics

Beebot goes to Pyeongchang

The Winter Olympics was a great opportunity to incorporate a fun and engaging coding activity.
Students selected a Canadian Olympian and completed a research activity (identifying their province, event, Olympic venue and results). Using this information, students wrote lines of code in order to move the Beebot to the various locations on the grid.

When preparing for this task, I created a master copy of the selected athletes and their information so I could verify student answers. I created the grid and laminated it then adhered velcro tabs. My thinking was this would make it easier to vary the grid and change it up for each group of students. It also allowed me to include more Canadian athletes so everyone had their own athlete. This was important as throughout this activity, students shared their research information with their peers as they were now the "expert".

**Now, as much as this velcro idea sounds great, when I tested it with my beautifully laminated cards, the Beebot got stuck! I tried taping each card down but it still wasn't working as intended. So, the solution.....PLEXIGLASS! This was AWESOME! The plexiglass gives a smooth surface and can be placed over any grid and used over and over again.

Get the coding worksheet and task card here

Bee Bot Math Challenge

The Bee Bot Math Challenge 

The Bee Bot Math challenge allows students to solve problems involving the addition and subtraction of single-digit whole numbers, using a variety of mental strategies and describe the relative locations of objects or people using positional language which links directly to the Ontario Curriculum while the students are engaged and having fun!

Task

Students are given a grid where numbers are placed randomly (1-12) initially on grid. Using a pair of dice, students are challenged to roll the dice and add the two numbers together. The sum of the two numbers will indicate where the bee bot will travel. Students then program the bee bot to travel to the correct response while explaining and problem solving how they must travel to reach their appropriate square.

Students absolutely loved this challenge. It was a fun and easy way to practice daily math computation and provide an easy way to re-enforce basic math facts.

Grade 3 Forces - Science

• Link to May the Force Be With You task cardAfter completing their unit on Forces, the grade 3 students were asked to choose a force they felt comfortable teaching others about. Their goal, was to create a group poster with four sections, each teaching about a different force. 
• Along with using their classroom notes and textbooks, students were given several periods to complete additional research on the force they chose. 
• Once the students had compiled all of the necessary information, they began to sort their ideas into an informational writing piece. 
• students then completed their section on the poster
• As a last step, each student used Scratch and Makey Makey to make a voice recording of their information and add it to their poster to create a 'talking poster.'

Parent Engagement Evening

Parent Engagement Evening

Welcome to

FULL STEAM AHEAD!

Makerspaces are popping up in schools across the country. Makerspaces provide hands-on, creative ways to encourage students to design, experiment, build and invent as they deeply engage in science, engineering, math, arts and tinkering with or without technology.

 

With the support of our CSC (parent council), St. Rose School has designed a space to accommodate such a wide range of activities for play based discovery and inquiry based learning in a STEAM environment for all our students!  Our new area is called, “CREATION STATION”.

Diversity and cross-pollination of activities are critical to the design, making and exploration process, and they are what set makerspaces apart from regular classrooms and have become an alternative learning environment to reach all learners.  

Our evening provided an opportunity for parents to participate first hand with this old "new" movement of tinkering, building, experimenting, failing and trying again with their children.  Parents and their children moved through several rotations as they explore the energy within the walls of St. Rose School.  Full STEAM Ahead was the perfect way to introduce and remind them of the importance of letting our kids create, invent, tinker, explore & discover.

• Our Creation Station is a place where students can gather to create, invent, tinker, explore and discover using a variety of tools and materials.

• Our Creation Station is NOT based on the materials you provide but rather the philosophy that is fostered surrounding purposeful creation. Project may or may not involve technology.

• Students are free to express their creativity in a unique, free learning environment that encourages open ended exploration with some degree of planning and brainstorming

• The goal is that students see themselves as creators and inventors that have an effect on the materials and the space around them.

• The makerspace movement brings PLAY , CREATIVITY AND IMAGINATION TO LIFE!

Technology plays an important role in our STEAM projects. Through the implementation of both exploratory, teacher directed activities and student inquiry with an emphasis on 21st Century Competencies (Critical Thinking, Collaboration and Creativity and Innovation) and Global Goals for Sustainable Development (Quality Education, Gender Inequality, and Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure) as they progress through stages of coding proficiency.  

Our team shared a continuum of curriculum focused, teacher friendly stand alone coding resources that they created and implemented with their students.  The student work was displayed and demonstrated the value of integrating STEAM activities within the classroom setting.