Mapleshade launches grant-funded elementary robotics program

Date: 1/2/2015

EAST LONGMEADOW – At Mapleshade Elementary School, fourth and fifth graders now have robotics as part of their curriculum thanks to grants from several local and national organizations.

“It connects with technology and engineering standards that are part of the framework and in fourth grade the students built the robots using Lego guides and they followed a pretty standard structure for how to build them,” Danielle Larkin, a fourth grade teacher at Mapleshade School, said.

Mapleshade Principal Michael Fredette said the total cost for the robotics program was $5,500. Horace Mann, Berkshire Bank, and the East Longmeadow Educational Endowment Fund each awarded grants to the school for the project.

Grade 4 students explored basic functions of their Lego EV3 robots, ranging from movements such as spins and turning to other functions such as speech and utilizing motors, she added.

“Some of my students turned one of the motors into a catapult,” Larkin noted. “The two wheels run on two different motors and you can actually add a third motor. In addition to the motors, the kids got the robots to respond to different stimuli using sensors.”

One sensor measures sound, another compares the distance from the robot, and a third allows the robot to react to movement or touch based on it’s programming, she added. Students used Lego Mindstorms software to program their robots.

“When my fourth graders become fifth graders they’ll have all this under their belts and then the fifth grade teacher [Bill Sears] is going to do more complex programming; a series of commands, and he’s also incorporating his math standards,” Larkin said. “[Sears is] having them look at angles and how to get the robot to turn based on angles and measuring.”

Fredette said he believes that the robotics program should be an element of the school’s curriculum so that every student experiences building and programing a robot.

 “In my last position I was a principal at [New Hingham Regional Elementary School in the Hampshire Regional School District], we wrote grants and started small similarly to the way we’re doing it now, starting with robotics,” he added.

During the program’s first year at New Hingham Elementary School, it began slowly but over the next couple of years the program continued to climb, Fredette noted.

“The students love it, he added. “They really do. They talk about robotics probably more than most components of their school day. They respond to it really well and so when I saw the outcomes from the student perspective, I always wanted to keep trying to accomplish it in my current position.”

Larkin said students have stated that they have learned about teamwork, the engineering design process, and how to have fun with science since they began their robotics coursework.

“I actually had a student who actually came to me a couple days ago and said that he saved up all his birthday money; he listed a couple other places he saved money from, to go buy one on his own so he could work on it at home,” she added.

Fredette said he hopes third grade students would be able to learn robotics with Lego Education WeDo with potential future grants.

“We’d like to bring this down to third grade level so that all the children in the building will have an experience with robotics,” he added. “Access to more robots and more technology is limited as of today so we’ll continue grant opportunities and investigating grant opportunities through these to build on what we currently have.

“Ideally, what I’d like to see is three or four [robotics] kits with laptop technology to support them for grades 4 and 5 and then two kits with laptop technology to support them for grade 3,” he continued.