Boost student engagement with fun activities using Spheros, all while teaching your class a bunch of vital skills across a range of subjects.
I’ve been working with Spheros as part of STEAM training in schools lately. Although I’ve used Spheros primarily to teach students block coding and how to debug to work the kinks out of their code to achieve the desired goals, it got me thinking about other skills students are learning while working with these little robots.
Not only do Spheros teach children vital computational thinking and problem-solving skills, but they also offer so many learnings in other areas of the curriculum.
Read on to discover how you can use Spheros to engage your students while they master a bunch of other useful skills.
Geometry
In order to get their Sphero to travel through a maze at all the right points, they need to input angles precisely.
Physics
In order to get their Sphero to arrive at a specific location at a specific time, they will need to figure out how long the robot travels at differing speeds.
Science
Students can experiment with and gain a greater understanding of why Spheros behave differently on different surfaces.
English
Taking the fable of the tortoise and the hare as an example, ask your students why when they code the Sphero to move more slowly, they have more control and actually finish faster than those the try to go full speed. You could also link this to road safety while you’re at it!
Maths
There are so many authentic learnings relating to maths for your students; estimations of time, distance, speed, adjustments, division, and multiplication.
Teamwork & Collaboration
Students have to work together, and effectively communicate their ideas as a team in order to achieve success.
Physical Education
You may be surprised at how much running the children have to do to retrieve their Spheros in order to get back to where they started so their Sphero and Code can be reset time over and over again.
All of these curriculum areas and skills were tested with just one simple activity of coding the robots to navigate a maze of masking tape on the floor. And no doubt there are even more areas of the curriculum that you will be able to integrate into your robotics or coding work.
Have fun thinking up new and innovative ways to engage your students with Sphero!
