4-26-2010

4-26-2010

We were able to go to meet with Mrs. Moran, the kindergarten teacher that we will be working with on Project #2 this week. We are going to be introducing the PicoCrickets to her class as an addition to her robot unit that she did last week. The kindergarteners were going to be building their own robot on Friday and they were doing writing activities and more surrounding their construction. We plan to go in this Thursday in order to help expand one what they have learned. During our brainstorming and planning, we decided that often times a child's conception of a robot is limited to the tradition robots like CP30 from Star Wars or the robot maid from The Jetsons. The latest robot to hit the kid's movie scene is Wall E who again fits a child's traditional schema for what a robot is. We plan to help kids to see how robots are found all around them, focusing on their toys. We really liked how when Krissy taught us about the PicoCrickets she used toys to show how the programming works. We are hoping to use different toys as examples of programming and then assist the kids in creating their own programs on the PicoCricket software to illustrate what happens in their toys. In order to make this more child-centered and play-based we decided to do centers. The students move about the centers in order to complete different challenges (in which they create different programs). We want the children to expand their schemas to include things like toys and other things they will see in their daily lives. I am really excited to see how things go. I really think that this will work great with kindergarteners because they are often so open to challenges and I think we will see a lot of creative thinking on their part. I am excited to get to observe them in their explorations as well.