A big thank you to the ISTE Coaches Group, who have been encouraging Technology Integration Specialists not only to blog regularly, but also to read and comment on our fellow colleagues’ blogs.
Today I am writing about combining Sight Words and Coding in Kindergarten. Both of our Kindergarten teachers taught in 1st grade last year. They are familiar with Bee-bots and wanted to use them in their Kindergarten classrooms. Bee-bots are small, user friendly robots that can be programmed using arrow keys. We talked about possibly using math problems with the Beebots, but decided to begin with sight words for this first session.
Our ever helpful building engineer cut display boards in half for us (yes, it takes a village!). I drew a grid on each board with a black marker and cut and pasted enlarged sight words on random squares. We also provided an audio option for those needing or wanting the challenge of only hearing the word and then finding it on the board. We linked a Chatter Pix, see sample below, to a QR code. This could be a fun buddy activity if you are paired with an older classroom and then the teacher would have a ChatterPix for each vocabulary or sight word made already.
However, for this first time, we decided scanning QR codes with an iPad to hear the word was a bit much in conjunction with the coding steps. Later in the school year we can incorporate this for differentiation. At the start of the year, just writing the sight words down on index cards for K students to select is fine.
After a brief whole class overview, students work in groups of four or five and take turns with jobs—one student selecting a word from the pile of cards, one finding the word on the board, another laying out the directional arrows next to board to get to the designated word, one who programs the robot to move, and if you do have five in a group, one can be the “fixer.” If the sequence isn’t working, then the fixer adjusts the steps and tries it again. If time permits, a whole class wrap-up is helpful for allowing children to share and synthesize what they have learned. Besides reinforcing sight words and learning the basics of coding, students are also learning how to work together.
In first grade last year teachers used the Bee-bots in social studies, navigating to places in the community using pictures of the post office, hospital, train station, etc. on the board as well as using prepositions like over, under, between, next to in the direction cards. There are many curricular possibilities. Go to Twitter and do a search for Bee-bot for further inspiration! I would love to hear what other Coding activities you do for primary students as well. Thanks so much for stopping by. 😁
