(above) Back row: Kyle Arlington, Superintendent, Karen Goger and Graceann Griffin; front row: Matteo Raimondi, Kevin Maytidu and Arya Shah.
Harding STEM Students Show Off Coding Skills
Submitted by Angela Sandull
Harding School teachers, Mrs. Goger and Mrs. Griffin introduced 3 STEM students from Harding Elementary School to Board members at a recent Board of Education meeting. Each student has shown an interest in coding and was selected to demonstrate what they have learned during their time spent in the school’s new makerspace.
In the month of December, students in all grade levels were introduced to coding. Mrs. Griffin pushed into classrooms and used code.org and a variety of unplugged lessons to introduce the concept of coding. Students in grades 1 and 2 learned to code Dash, a colorful and engaging robot, using a laptop and colored blocks of code.
Students in grades 3 and 4 worked with Ozobots which are approximately the size of a golf ball and have a sensor at the bottom that reads colors in its path. The students used both colored markers and “Blockly” on the laptop to code.
Students in grades 5 and 6 worked with our robot Sphero, which is larger than the Ozobot and more sophisticated, making it ideal for both beginners and seasoned programmers. After practicing how to code them, they determined the heading, duration and speed a Sphero would need to travel to successfully navigate a maze.
Arya Shah, a 2nd grader, introduced Dash which was equipped with a snap-on bulldoze bar. Arya demonstrated how to code the robot to move a mound of imitation snowballs in the direction he chose. Matteo Raimondi, a 3rd grader, used markers to create a coded path on a piece of white paper for his robot Ozobot to follow. Lastly, 6th grader, Kevin Maytidu, coded Sphero to follow a specific path on the floor.
Learning the basics of coding has taught Harding STEM students how to solve problems logically using math while also having fun.
Photo by Kenilworth Public Schools
