In the VEX GO course earlier this week, @Anna_Blake had a GREAT question for the other educators.
How do you group your students for STEM Labs and building? Do you assign pairs and keep them the same? Change them each class? Do you let students choose their own partners?
We have the Robotics Roles and Routines sheet inside of the STEM Labs to help organize students, but there are a lot of nuances when it comes to your classroom on how you can use those roles.
I teach STEM as a specialist role to Years 3 to 6 in Australia (that is 7 to 12 years old) and find having a role-based team approach helps students use, practice, and develop skills and provides the opportunity for each student to experience different roles which focus on / requires different skill areas and strengths. Obviously this depends on your context, timing of lessons, and learners but your students should be able to work through the different roles over the course of the school year. This approach enables students to become aware of the different roles and build skills in new areas. For example, I had a student who thought that building was what he believed he was good at, but later found that collecting the data and project managing were actually his strengths.
Having a role-based team approach lets students have the opportunity to try all areas. I use the robotics roles and routines as a resource in the STEM labs as a guide but adapt as my groups across different year levels are usually made up of 4 to 6 students, so I need to add additional roles to engage all students. This may include parts manager, data collection, communicator etc. Last year, when teaching younger students, they had lanyards that had their role, an image and what they needed to do as part of their role to ensure everyone knew what they were accountable for. We also use Seesaw as a digital portfolio, this enables students to capture their learning as they progress through a project and also provides different ways for students to demonstrate their learning (through writing, drawing, photographs and video recording), differentiation is easily achieved through the accessibility features of the iPad.
@Michele_Pikunic I also would love to see a picture of the lanyards! I love how you mention that you want students to learn about each role. I honestly hadn’t thought of this. I wonder if I could incorporate badging or another way to allow students to feel empowered as a communicator or builder. Really great thoughts!
Thank you for sharing this @Alaina_Caulkett! I found the conversation so interesting about how everyone groups their students differently. I started with @Mark_Johnston suggestion to keep my groups the same for the next Codebase unit. I had some students tell me how happy they were today! Who knew! I thought allowing my students to have different partners each STEM Lab was fun but apparently a change is what everyone needed.
I find that I want students to get a feel for working with different partners throughout the year but at the end of the year I can see that my students are ready to be with a comfortable partner that they choose.
I’ve had a look but no photos that show the lanyards in use, so I just snipped a copy of my team roles from my file. This is one for Communicator that I would use with my Year 3 students when using VEX GO. I size and place in a plastic pouch and for management, I just hang the lanyards on hooks near my whiteboard, one complete set for each team. Roles could include Future Engineer, Parts Manager, Coder and Tester, Communicator. I teach the different roles and their responsibilities at the start and review with each new project and team changes. No one ever feels like they have nothing to do, no-one takes over as they work collaboratively on different parts of a whole project.
@Michele_Pikunic these are fantastic! Can you share each of the roles? I want to make my own ( I won’t steal them!) and I’ll share what I make! I think this is such a fantastic idea. At my school we really try to talk about career quite frequently. THANK YOU for sharing!
Please find attached snips of the other roles. I also created a QR code that links to the interactive parts poster, so students can independently access.
Happy to share and I look forward to seeing what you come up with.
I love these so much @Michele_Pikunic ! They are simple and supportive, and I really like that all students get to try out and explore all of the roles. In terms of switching things up over the course of the year, @Anna_Blake think it’s important to give students multiple opportunities over time - as students grow, and their skills grow, their perceptions of each role in relation to who they are becoming can change. I found even with young students, things they didn’t like or think they were good at in October or November, often became things they were proud of by March or April. Kids may make strides in areas spatial reasoning or writing, that suddenly opens their eyes/mind to being an engineer or communicator in a new way.
