STREAM in Action
Elementary level teachers are introducing new STREAM (Science, Technology, Research, Engineering, Art, and Math) units of study to their students.
One third grade class at Increase Miller Elementary School is exploring coding and collaboration through an innovative project built around the novel "The Wild Robot" by Peter Brown.
Marissa Marmo’s third graders are gathered in small groups around tables, cutting out pieces of paper “track,” and deciding how to tape them together. Every few inches, the track has a block of three white squares. How the children choose to color the squares represents a directive to the small robot who will travel the track.
This is what collaboration looks like . . .
and sounds like.
“What about this?”
“That’s a good idea!”
“You are not listening to me.”
“Maybe we can try this!”
“See if this works.”
“We need to do this.”
“Hold it for me while I try this.”
“Maybe, instead, we could . . “
The Wild Robot Project
The project was inspired by “The Wild Robot,” a children’s novel by Peter Brown that Ms. Marmo has been reading aloud to her students this fall. The main character is a robot named Roz who finds herself alone on a remote, wild island and has to fend for herself.
“’The Wild Robot’ has started many discussions about robot behavior,” said Ms. Marmo. “The students wondered about a robot’s capacity to make decisions. To help them understand Roz, the robot, I borrowed Ozobots from the school library. These small robots are programmable through drawn lines and color codes. Children discovered today that robots can’t make decisions—they only do what they are programmed to do.”
Ms. Marmo’s class is reading “The Wild Robot” as part of The Global Read—an initiative that connects students and teachers around the world through reading the same book during a set 6-week period.
“We’ve been using Padlet, a digital bulletin board, to share reflections about ‘The Wild Robot’ with students from Connecticut, Louisiana, California, and Canada,” said Mrs. Marmo. “We’ll end the project by having an online conversation with a third-grade class in Michigan.”