Lesson Activity with ECDC Students

Lesson Activity with ECDC Students

Today in the ICREATE Lab, we did a 15 minute lesson activity to the ECDC 4th grade students. We had to collaborate on the use of technology with a 4th grade TEK. The 4th grade TEK we chose was (1B) which is to make informed choices in the use and conservation of natural resources and reusing and recycling of materials such as paper, aluminum, glass, cans, and plastic. 

Our Activity 

Before we performed the activity, we made recycling trucks using the WeDo 2.0 lego kits. Our goal was using them by learning to code while at the same time learning about recycling. We opened up the lesson by introducing the activity with some basic questions such as: what is recycling and what are recyclable materials? Afterwards, we introduced what the WeDo legos were and explained that we were able to code them to make them move. After we gave them an example code, we let them explore some coding of their own. After their exploring, we challenged the students to use recycling trucks to move them forward or backwards based on the question asked. Anything that was not recyclable they would code the recycling truck to go forward while the things that are recyclable they would code them to make them move backwards. This allowed us to see their comprehension of recycling as well as what they learned in coding. 

My Experience

Overall, the experience was so much fun. As the students came to our activity, they were so excited to play with the legos. Once they realized that they could code the recycling trucks they looked so amazed. Each group did an amazing job with coding and the comprehension of recycling. 

Group one was more interested in changing the colors of the light as the truck moved. They coded the light to do rainbow colors and wanted to see how long they could make the code go for until it stopped. For the end challenge, they answered all the questions right about recycling as well as getting the correct coding.

The second group was more interested in coding the truck to music. They made the truck go backwards and forwards to all different types of sounds until the code was over. They really seemed to enjoy the dolphin one and made it code into some sort of dolphin calling noise. This group did a great job with coding but answered one recycling question wrong at the end. 

The last group was more interested in using coding for speed. They were coding the recycling trucks to race by using the codes to make it go faster. They raced each other multiple times and it seemed as if the trucks were taking turns winning. The students had such a fun time using different codes to race them. In the end, they did a great job with the coding comprehension but they also missed a recycling question. 

Conclusion

It was an amazing experience working with the 4th grade ECDC students. They taught me as much as I taught them. They taught me that each lesson you give will be slightly different and you have to accomodate to the students. The students by the end were confident with coding and wanted to get more exploring. 

ISTE Standard

3c: Plan collaboratively with other educators to create learning activities that cross disciplines to strengthen student understanding of CT and CS concepts and transfer application of knowledge in new contexts.

4a: Design CT activities where data can be obtained, analyzed and represented to support problem-solving and learning in other content areas.

I found that this activity fit this standard because we were able to obtain, analyze and represent data to support problem solving and learning in other content areas. We were able to use coding to find the importance of recycling to be able to apply that to our everyday life to make the world a better place.