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Part 1: Prompt
Lesson idea prompt : Senior infants
Resources
Paper cups
Card
Blocks (wooded cuboid shapes)
Barbie doll
Timer
Story: Little Red Riding Hood
Little Red Riding Hood has just discovered her Grandma is a witch, she needs to get out of the forest as quickly as possible. The problem is, the forest has a river that has flooded, and Little Red Little Riding Hood needs to get past the river using a bridge. The bridge needs to be tall enough to make sure that the water doesn’t touch it, so at least two blocks high,(show blocks) and strong enough for Red Riding Hood to walk across. Can you design the bridge in less than 10 minutes using card, blocks and cups?
The test will be that the bridge has to hold a doll the size of a Barbie up for 30 seconds
Final question: Can you help Little Red Riding Hood get across?
The children will be asked to build their bridges but will not be able to test them until the end.
Part 2
The article highlights the important skills that developed through teaching coding in the early years. Noticeably, a lot of the skills mentioned are significant problem solving skills which can be used in other subjects, particularly Maths in future years. It is very important that children are taught how to use these skills from an early age, as they are transferable skills which will make them more independent learners that can adapt what they know and apply it in other settings. These skills are extremely useful for students, particularly the problem solving, puzzle solving types of activities. Many students can learn how to apply things they learn in certain contexts however they can lose confidence quickly when asked questions in slightly different ways, particularly in like Maths. I agree that these are complementary skills which work well alongside each other. Additionally, students may not find maths easy, but may thrive with these more digital activities. I would predict that for students who struggle with maths but enjoy these computational thinking tasks, their confidence may improve with other similar Maths activities, when they’ve experienced some success. Coding skills also integrate will with topics like shape, angles, algebra and with activities like mapping in SESE. Computational thinking overall is a very important skill for children to continually develop, and the resources like bee bots, codebot, lightbot etc all offer a way to make these activities fun and interactive. Overall the article highlights the importance of these computational thinking tasks, particularly in the younger years. It’s also important to make coding less daunting and more accessible to students, and these types of activities manage to make coding tasks fun and engaging for students in the early years. The article also mentions the importance of family engagement and I agree that it would also be nice to demonstrate activities like the bee bots and similar robotic kits like sphere Indi to parents and caregivers, so that they could see and experience coding activities themselves. Coding is something that many people have no real understanding of and so this could be a very enjoyable and interesting activity for parents and caregivers to participate in.