5th grade students at Ramsay recently were given the opportunity to get their hands on a Hummingbird Duo Robotics Kit. The students began their lesson with a brief introduction of robotics terminology, learning the differences between hardware and software, as well as a basic overview of polarity and circuitry. Within minutes the students had attached multiple LEDs and sensors to the Hummingbird, easily manipulating the terminal tool to complete circuits. The lesson continued on the software side, where students learned about expressions and sequences in CREATE Lab Visual Programmer.

Once the basics were covered, the students challenged each other to create different types of robots. The projects started out small, with one student challenging another to create a robot that would blink between purple and red when a rotary sensor was turned. This led to more and more complexity, culminating in the students creating a 2-wheeled vehicle controlled through sound, which moved across the table until the students yelled at it to stop.

The lesson itself lasted a mere 45 minutes, though, by the end of the period, it was clear that the 5th graders had grasped the basic understanding of programming the Hummingbird. In our second lesson, students will have the opportunity to build a robotic vehicle with a chassis that they built at home!