My students need to be challenged to problem solve in different situations by using the Sphero robots.
$790 goal
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month
This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
The students at our school are a diverse group of youngsters. We have a high rate of poverty in the area and unfortunately we are a low performing school. We are slowly showing improvement. I am proud to be able to teach some of the STEM elective classes along with the seventh Advance math class at our school. This does not necessarily mean that their reading, writing or math skills are to grade level.
I have the challenge of working with students that are naturally curious and at the same time those that wonder how did I get stuck in this class and why do I need to learn this.
Whether interested or not, I want to try to make the class engaging for all the students.
My Project
Problem solving is one of the key experiences that today's middle school student needs more of. These Sphero robots will be a great tool to incorporate into many different lessons.
The beauty of these robots is that they can be used in all of the different classes I teach.
In the advance math classes the students can experiment with the robots to explore the concepts of "speed versus distance" and "time versus distance". The students can calculate and graph the relationships.
In a different lesson the students can be asked to program the Sphero robot to draw regular shapes like squares, triangles, pentagons, etc. the problem solving in this case had to do with the students having to understand the angles involved. There are several geometric concepts that come into play in this kind of activity.
In Design and Modeling the students could be given a design challenge that involved designing a reliable vehicle power by a Sphero robot that deliver the goods as fast as possible between the two destinations and make the most amount of profit.
In Computer Science the students will be able to venture away from block coding and transition into text programming with different activities. A simple communication activity that the students could attempt is get the Sphero to move from a beginning to an endpoint following a specific path. The twist is that the student doing the programming will not get to see the path. The team mates will have to communicate the required information of distances and angles to the programmer. The possibilities are endless!
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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 Ms. Recher and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
