Robert Frost once said, "I am not a teacher, but an awakener." Help the future scientists, makers, engineers, techies, physicists and artists in our classroom awaken to the world around them!
My students are innovative, creative, and imaginative thinkers who come from a low income area in Florida.
These elementary students have a desire to learn everything they can about the natural world, and I hope to give them the chance to do that. They love to build, make, and invent. With your help, we can expose these students to age-appropriate tools that will expose them to complex concepts in science, like coding. It is my hope that through this project, my students, especially those who are under-represented in the STEM fields, can find their passion for coding and translate that into a future career.
My Project
If we teach students what they need to know for today's world, then they are already behind. However, if we teach students what they need to know for the world in twenty years, then they are where they need to be. I don't remember where I read those inspired thoughts, but they could not be more true. Teaching students coding is very much linked with teaching students to read. In the foreseeable future, students will be reading in codes more than they will in words, so isn't it important to teach these basic skills now, so they are not steps behind the world's greatest innovators? I think so!
The Dot Robot by Wonder Workshop will help students learn to code and will ignite their passion for STEM!
Once their curiosity has been ignited, they can carry this with them for the rest of their lives. Igniting this flame is especially important for those who are under-represented in the STEM fields like minorities and females. Hooking these groups (of whom my school is primarily comprised of) on coding will potentially follow them through school and lead to both college and career choices in the STEM fields. By offering these students a taste of the future, they can break their own cycles of poverty and rise above to show the world that they can have success, too!
The Dot Robot interacts with and teaches students how to use basic coding skills and develops coding literacy. The students will then be launched into writing their own code for the Dot Robot and will be able to share it with their peers and teachers around the school. It is my hope that the students at my school will learn, love, and pursue coding throughout their lives by just starting with a simple robot.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mrs. Gimmi and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
