Over this half term Year One and Two introduced to floor robots in our computing lessons. They have talked about what the buttons on a floor robot might do and then tried the buttons out. They have spent time linking an outcome to a button press. They have also considered the direction command buttons, as well as the ‘clear memory’ and ‘run program’ buttons.

The children learnt about the language used to give directions and how precise it needs to be. They also worked with a partner to give and follow instructions, see the photos below.

LS Computing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then we focused on programming the floor robot to move forwards and backwards. The children saw that the robot moves forwards and backwards a fixed distance. This highlighted the idea that robots follow a clear, fixed command in a precise and repeatable way. The children had to think about starting the robot from the same place each time.

LS - Bee bots

 

 

 

 

They progressed onto using ‘left turn’ and ‘right turn’ commands along with ‘forwards’ and ‘backwards’ commands. Doing this will allowed them to develop slightly more complex programs. The children created their programs through trial and error, before moving on to planning out their programs. They have learnt to predict where given programs will move the robot to. They made their predictions by looking at the commands and matching the program steps to movements. They had to decide what their program would do and before creating it and testing it on the robot. Where needed, the children also debugged their program. 

Using our lovely new themed mats the children planned routes around a mat before they started to write programs for those routes. The activities in this lesson also introduced the concept of there being more than one way to solve a problem. This concept is valid for a lot of programming activities: the same outcome can be achieved through a number of different approaches, and there is not necessarily a ‘right’ approach. The lesson also introduced the idea of program design, where learners need to plan what they want their program to achieve before they start programming.

Take a look at these photos to see the fun they have been having! 

Bee Bot Activities