My middle school students are caring, curious, creative, and sometimes comedians. We are not an affluent community. Covid has brought additional deeper financial hardships to our families, community, and as a result, our school budget. Despite the real-life challenges many face daily, my students are still involved in school life, sports, and clubs, while currently following CDC guidelines. Due to the increased Covid cases since the holidays, we are currently in a hybrid model (face to face 4 days and virtual 1). The students are in pods, and teachers push into classes to keep movement in hallways at a minimum. Our students need to have the best possible in-school experience; we are truly loving being together.
My students are developing skills and mindsets that will help them be successful in life, be ready to take on whatever life throws their way, and contributing to members of their communities.
My Project
We recently learned that our current LEGO Mindstorm EV3 Education Kits would no longer be supported in 2 years. Therefore, we are beginning to "invest" in the next generation kits so that our 300 students will still have robotics in their curriculum. Through DonorsChoose and other grants, it took us almost 2 years to build our current program of 12 kits; we are happy to have some lead time to update our LEGO kits so that our robotics and coding curriculum will be able to transition to the updated LEGO Education Spike Prime sets seamlessly.
My students demonstrate collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and communication skills; better yet, they are having fun as they work through the LEGO coding challenges.
They learn to manage the inventory, code the brick to move forward, backward, and parallel park with sound, use the sensors to follow a black line, code their robot to move in figure 8 around 2 cups, and return to the start position. They can build and program the gripper to move objects, and they even started designing and 3D printing accessories for our EV3s.
The Spike Prime sets will offer even more features and ensure that my students will continue with growth mindset development while improving their coding skills with bigger challenges.
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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. McCarthy and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
