Coding Unplugged

In New Zealand we have changes to our Technology aspect of our curriculum that now involves digital technologies. This can be super confusing and complicated for teachers to try and implement in the classroom - especially if they have no previous experience or knowledge about digital technologies. 

For our students, we need to start introducing terminology like computational thinking and designing learning outcomes that interweave technology into the classroom. For more information on what these terms are or the digital technologies classroom, check out my previous website post. 

For my students, they only need to be using computational thinking in non-computerised learning outcomes. So this means without using technology or devices in the learning. Of course you can use them, but as my students had never heard the term 'coding' or computational thinking before we went and unpacked these in basic activities. My students were so engaged in the learning activity!

We have been learning how to 'think like a futurist' and had a robot arrive in our classroom that has been prompting us to think of futuristic type activities. That is why there is a cute little robot in our activity. So how did we start?
First we obviously unpacked the language that we would be using (directional positions) and then identified what our left and right were. This was the hard part as so many students were confused over which was their actual left! 
​We then started with whole class learning with computational thinking, giving instructions to get our robot from his beginning position to his spaceship. This was great discussion to begin with as we had lots of confusion over left and right again. 
Check out the video below of our first inital discussion prompts!

Once we had a few practices, I then introduced 'space rocks' - parts of the board that our robot can't go on or through to add some difficulty. This really made students think about what they needed to do and where they could go. We continued to work on problems in groups with students taking turns being the designer and the coder. Moving the robot and spaceship around the board in their own positions to create their own algorithms. This was the best part as students were able to do their own thing! They then had to write the instructions down on their whiteboards for each of their designer or coder problems. 
Check out this quick video of these group members explaining their work!

Once we had finished our group work, we moved onto creating our own individual boards with the robot, spaceship and spacerocks. We created a success criteria for what they needed and how to present it, ready for our learning presentations this week with our families! Can't wait to share our finished products with you once we have completed them this week!