Is anybody already teaching? I'm wondering if anybody's already started their school year.

No, not yet. Still enjoying the last breath of Summer.

I will tell you, 200 teachers today, we have all three schools, K through 5. Were all together and we did the tallest tower from ve. Oh, Wow. And you know, it was after lunch where any of you have done anything after lunch. I'll know how that is. They were all like, Ugh, do we have to come back? And so we did it and they were like, I think the kids would love this. And I was like, yes, they would. And so we do it as a, well, it was like a little competition, but it was good. So it was a good day. But we, we start back next. I'm in Texas for all of you, and we start back next Wednesday for us. Wow. Oh my goodness. I know when the rest of y'all start back, Ashley wrote in the chat here that she's in Henry County, Georgia and tomorrow is their day eight. Wow.

That's so like beginning of August back to school. Yeah.

Wow. Well, thank you for Being here on day eight of your day. The eve of day eight. That is, that is some dedication right There.

So when do they get out? We get out Labor Day. I made Labor Day. I wish Memorial. When did y'all get out?

I get out on the same day, the end of May. Okay. We just have A really short summer. Wow. Seems like it. Yeah.

Yeah. They used to be me in West Virginia. We started back like August 15th, but we got like three weeks off for Thanksgiving.

I mean there's, there's pluses there Because of, because of hunting season in West Virginia course.

Oh, I grew up in West Virginia. We had every year deer day you had deer day off because everyone went hunting. So there was no point in having school. Yeah. We do have a week off every six weeks. I can't complain about. Oh, okay. It makes it nice. That's nice. That actually is like a good Yeah. Breather like that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, actually It's probably when you need it. Yeah. And the kids. Yeah. That's awesome.

All righty. So I guess we'll, we'll sort of get things, get things rolling. We've already started a little bit, but we'll do some introductions and sort of just kind of run through kind of what you can expect from this class and what everybody's hoping to get out of it. And then we'll talk a little bit about the stuff that we've read and watched over the week and activities that we've made and ideas that we have. And our hope is just that this can be like a great brainstorming time for everybody to get comfortable with things, to get excited about things, to get some good ideas that you can take to your classrooms to try with your students or things that you can tweak and figure out what will work best for you and, and, and hopefully that will all work out, work out well for everybody. So thank you all for being here with us this evening. Well, at least this evening for us. Aimee and I are coming to you live from the VEX Pittsburgh office together here. So we are in Pittsburgh and my name is Audra Sitz. And prior to joining VEX, I'm now a senior education developer here with VEX. And prior to joining VEX, I taught early elementary and early childhood as a teacher, sort of co-teacher administrator for a number of roles for over 15 years.

So VEX 123 and VEX GO are really sort of my happy place within the VEX continuum. And that is, that is where, where I love to live in my brain down with those younger kids and yeah. And Aimee, I'll let you go. Yeah. So my name's Aimee DeFoe. I'm also a senior education developer with Beck. I was a classroom teacher for over 20 years and I was also over principal for about eight-ish. So, and I've taught every grade between first grade and eighth grade. I've just never taught kindergarten. It's the one grade I've never taught. I did so, and Actually Aimee and I worked together. She was my principal and teacher down the hallway for a while. And now we've both migrated over here so we can kind of just go around and everybody can just tell us a little bit about who you are, where you are, what you teach, and what you're hoping to, to get out of this course together. So we can start with you next Aimee, if you'd like. And I'll just run through this little list at the top here. Sure. Hi, I'm Aimee. I am in the Pittsburgh area as well with Woodland Hills School District. And, and I have been teaching kindergarten for the last 10 years. Definitely my favorite age group as well. Like the, the little ones.

I've done a lot of of my own training online. Got my certification this summer. I'm interested in just getting some new interesting ideas to help my students, especially with literacy And, - And incorporating it into, in with the robotics. I think that will really catch a lot of them, especially the boys. So that's what I'm hoping. Awesome. Alrighty, Anna, you wanna go next?

I unmuted myself. I'm, I'm Anna. I'm an elementary tech integrator. I teach K through five computational thinking and computer science in southwest Pittsburgh. It's in Elizabeth Township. We're a little bit rural and what's really neat about my job is I get to also teach teachers. So I'm really looking forward to this course. 'cause for our first 10 days of my school year, we really like to do professional development. So I hope to gather some ideas for my other colleagues who do my job at other elementary schools and just kind of pass on that info. So any, any cool creative ideas hit me up. Fantastic. Alrighty. Who's next? I think we have Laura next.

Hi, I'm Laura McKay and I am in Claire Lake, Texas. And we are like south of Houston and we sort of served the NASA area. And so I was an elementary teacher and then a science coach and our superintendent came to me and said, Hey, we're gonna implement this whole robotics coding computational thinking program at three elementary schools. And so, and it was right when VEX came out with 123, GO and IQ. So we put all three into our schools. And so we spent last year doing that and it's been amazing the results with kids and how fun that's been. But now we're trying to take it to the next level. How do you teach your your standards, your essential standards using robotics? And so I'm here to share ideas with you and hear ideas and just collaborate. It's been really a, a, a great journey.

Awesome. Thank you. Alrighty. Ashley, do you Wanna share next? So I am in South Georgia and I've been teaching for nine years. I did three years in third grade, four years in first grade and then one year in fifth grade. So kind of all over the place. This year I'm actually the teacher that's doing a STEM lab and our county has just recently adapted the VEX GO and the VEX 123. So we're brand new at it, so I'm trying to learn as much as I can so we can start implementing it into our classrooms. Wonderful. Fantastic. Awesome. Alrighty. Desiree, would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself? My name is Desiree and I teach with Aimee here in Pittsburgh at Woodland Hills. So I am a first grade teacher. This is my second year in first grade, and then I had 12 years of fourth grade experience. Wow. So yes, we did our certification for the VEX this summer and we're just looking to really figure out how to incorporate the VEX GO into our, well we have a new period called the VEX period, so really how to incorporate it and how to do it daily or other day. So we're just trying to learn new things on how to get our kids up and running. Great. That is exciting. And Lori, I think you are last one over there.

There you're, Hi, I'm Lori Angelo and this is my 25th year of teaching. I've taught like Aimee every grade except for kindergarten K or first through 12th. And I teach the high school, but I'm trying to reach down to the elementary schools to give the, those students a better foundation. And my daughter's actually a special ed teacher for third grade and she was interested in the go to kind of try and incorporate language arts and math into her classes so that way, you know, there's some high interest. It's, you know, low barrier type of stuff. Yeah. Very, very cool. All right, well thank you everybody. I'm, I'm really excited. I think this is gonna be a, a good fun time and I think that there'll probably be a lot of ideas that whether you come up with them before class or during class or right afterwards. And our hope is just that we can sort of keep that going and keep that conversation happening. Both when we're in our little live sessions here and also in the, the PD plus community. We have a thread for our class that's a conversation that anybody that's, that's in the class or that's curious about the class can respond to. It's where you can share your ideas for activities, you can share your thoughts on anything that we've read or watched during the week.

So we can just sort of have that as a running record. And all of these live sessions will be recorded and then also uploaded to PD plus. So if you miss a week or you know somebody else that's doing the class and they weren't there and you wanna go back later and remember something that we talked about, all of those things will be saved in PD plus. So this isn't just sort of a one shot experience. The idea is kind of just to get the ball rolling, get things started, and get people excited and then keep it, keep it going over over time.

So has ended, anybody have a chance to do any of the pre sort of pre-reading, pre watching of the PD plus resources? We were taking a look at some of the clear camera interviews and the incorporating literacy and math with 123 and GO articles.

Can you give us a little thumbs up, thumbs down for that? I see some thumbs ups. Sweet.

Yay. That's fair. Yeah, so we thought we'd just sort of start by talking about some of, some of the, those concepts and things and we have, this is the book that Claire is talking about and that's a picture of Claire Cameron on the back. She's very, very lovely. Kit Aimee and I were fortunate enough to have dinner with her when she came to town to do her interviews on PD Plus. And this book has really been extremely important as we're, we've been developing curriculum particularly for 123, and GO and thinking about sort of the bigger picture of foundational skills and how that supports literacy and math with, with younger children. So we were hoping to kind of just get the ball rolling with some initial thoughts or feedback or, you had a really great quote that you were talking about before. Do you Remember what it was with the, The readiness stuff? So in, in the, I can't remember if it was the first video or the second video right now, but Claire Cameron talks about the context view of teaching children and that instead of looking at children like through what they cannot do, thinking about the context they're in and creating that context as a way of addressing their needs. Yeah, I'm kind of saying it in my own words, but that's what she's talking about.

And I was thinking about this a lot because I think as teachers we often are not in control of a lot of the things that we're faced with every day. We don't have control over whether kids eat breakfast or You know, what we're being asked to teach or whether we have enough time to address the certain things that, that we wanna do is we don't have control of a lot of things, but what we do have control of is our classroom environment and how we interact with each individual child and creating that context for them. So I think that's like incredibly powerful. Yeah. And in terms of sort of like reframing, like if, you know, if you're ever having that one of those days where you're just feeling defeated by all the outside things that are pounding in on you when you're trying to work with kids, you can think about, well here's what I can control, you know, and I can control what this environment is and how I set kids up, especially young kids for their day, what they're gonna do so they actually can get those foundational skills that will build into literacy and numeracy that they, you know, so like that was a really hopeful point for me, I thought. Yeah. Yeah. Did anybody else have any good sort of aha moments or surprising things or things that really aligned with your experience with children or things that didn't, you said, yeah, that seems great, but anything else to, to share or responses to the, the things that we were reading and watching, Mine had to be the hands-on experiences that the ki the kids get.

So like this week we, I've met with kindergarten through second graders and a lot of their teachers were like looking at me like, they're not gonna be able to do this. And I'm like, no, just wait. They can watch and they really could. And it was because it was a hands-on activity and not just a sit down and I'm just gonna write and do something. So that was really eye-opening. Yeah. Yeah. She says at one point that children learn first with their eyes, bodies, and hands. And that whole idea of en embodied cognition and embodied learning helps make learning go, go deeper, right? Because the more connections can make in our brains to what we're doing, the deeper that learning's going to be. And we make more connections when we're using our hands or we're doing hands on things when we're, you know, describing a shape with our hands like this. And not just with, with words or pointing at a picture or something like that. So yeah, I think the, the hands-on nature of what we can do with 123 and GO is hugely, hugely important to those sorts of foundational in instructional times where it doesn't feel to the kids like it's work time, right? It feels like play. We're excited to play with the robot.

They leave telling, telling you the story of what they did with the robot. Like, oh, we used our robot to, we built a dragon pushing machine and we chased away a dragon, right? Like that's what they did in their heads and in my mind I can now check off like, okay, spatial reasoning check, like computational thinking check we used, you know, directional words, positional words, check sequencing, check, yeah. Sequencing, decomposition, all of that stuff. But in their, their minds they're just, you know, super duper engaged, which is really, really powerful and, and imp and important, so important.

Who else wants to share? Yeah, share. Yeah, go for it.

I guess I was connecting with the executive functioning skills that was mentioned and last year we talked a little bit about executive functioning skills as we were doing it. But I think when you're first rolling out 123 and go, you know, you're just in the midst of teaching kids and looking at it and trying to think of ways to connect it to content. And so when we came back this year and started talking about it again, it was like we revisited those skills and you just don't realize there's not an easy way to measure them on a standardized test. And there's not easy way to measure growth in that. Does that make sense? But you see it qualitatively, yes. You see the kids talking and you see, and so sometimes I think robotics is a hard sell until they actually see a kid doing Robotics. Like we did little showcases and stuff and the community came in and they could see the kids doing and they're like, oh this is what you mean. And so they would see what we call those soft skills, but those are more of a real life skill. Yeah. So I was interested in those. Executive functioning skills are huge I think in growing lifelong learners and we talked about you start them in kindergarten and first grade knowing how to do this stuff.

They are not scared by the time they get to junior high or high school to try. 'cause they've always just done it. They don't think there's anything hard with it. But if you say in high school, Hey I'm gonna put, you wanna be on the robotics team, they're like, I can't do that. I've never done robotics in my life. So I dunno. Yeah, it's true. They are, that is stuff that is like hard to, hard to measure, but I feel like it's like that thing, right? You know it when you see it, right? You know, you know when there's growth it's so obvious. And to be able to have things that you, you know, as teachers that we can think and make those sorts of connections to how this is going to support executive functioning or working memory or spatial skills and motor skills. I mean the beginning of the year in kindergarten, you know, just trying to unpack your backpack and what goes in your desk and what goes in your cubby and like moving stuff around that mental model, you know, when she was talking about like making a mental model of the spaces that you're working in and the things that you're doing. Like being able to look at a 123 robot on a tile and make a model of it needs to move from here over there up here and then back over.

Right. That that's the same kind of mapping that we're asking kids to do in a lot of other, other ways.

Anybody else have a have any thoughts Or ideas? Pressure? I completely agree with what Laura was saying with, you have to visualize it and you have to really see the kids doing it. So in a month my school just got invited and I'm actually gonna be showcasing VEX GO - Woo - at the Children's Museum in downtown Pittsburgh. They're going to have 12,000 educators from around the world there looking at hands-on robotics. Wow. And I just got the invite last night and I think exactly what Laura's saying, that's the way to see kids with robotics. You have to go, we're gonna have a little tent and a little table so kids can kids and parents and educators can stop by. You guys can stop by. Yeah. And, and see what the kids can do with, with their hands on robotics. Because I think it's one thing I, I've, I've kind of thought about this for a long time. Like pictures, I've thought of videos, even having the kids explain what they're doing. You really see how impactful the engagement and really how much their mind start changing that cognitive psychology, how much they start talking, you know, with first, second, third they start using language that, you know, our math teachers need the kids to use and they really start owning their own work and that agency really takes over.

But anyway, I just wanted to share that real fast for my Pittsburgh people. That's awesome. That's great. Yeah. I had no idea that was even happening. That's great. Desiree, do you have have something Sarah? I see a little hand pop up in your Yeah, so I originally when our district was like, here you go have at it.

I was kind of a little reluctant because first my mindset is still just, you know, on that upper elementary. So I'm slowly, you know, adjusting to, you know, the younger kids. But so when I was taking the certifications I kinda like did it on my own and I kind of sat in my own little office kind of quiet. So recently I kind of let my son play around with it and I kind of was like modeling how I was gonna teach it to like my kids, like through him to kind of work out those frustrations, kind of those kinks a little bit. So it was definitely the, the hands-on that really is kind of helping to close some of those question marks that I, you know, having approaching through the school year. Yeah. That's awesome. How old is your son?

He is going to second grade, so he's seven. Oh, awesome. Oh that's, that's great. You've got a great little little Guinea pig there At home. Yes. So yeah, so like at first, so he would come in and like see what I was doing. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Like I gotta figure this out, I gotta figure this out. And then he was like, can I play with it? I'm like, okay. Like let's, so I kind of, you know, was like, well he is a little trial and error. So I was able to kind of walk through it to, you know, kind of see how it's gonna roll out. It's a lot different when you're reading about it and you're watching videos about it, but to see like an actual child being engaged in it, you know, kind of closes some of those question marks that I have going into the school year. Yeah, yeah. Because there are certain things I think, at least for me, that were intuitive for the kids that I wasn't necessarily sure were going to be, or that, that they just were more comfortable with. Like I found that a lot of kids just had a lot more patience and persistence for the, you know, the mistakes that they'd make. Oh, it turned left and it needed to turn right. Oh, okay. Like no biggie. Whereas sometimes that's a big hurdle when you're doing things like math problems or writing things and somebody wrote a journal entry and they, you know, didn't spell this word right.

And we're trying to figure out what the initial sounds are. Right. And they have to try again. And sometimes that is like pulling teeth to get them to just try again, take what we did and try again. And yet with, with the robot, it's, it's just like, oh, okay cool. Yeah, no, I gotta go the other way. Great. Like no big deal. And, and that, that in and of itself, that whole trial and error, learning from failure, making that comfortable is, is incredibly powerful and, and will support a lot of what, what we're trying to do with kids all over in all of the, all the subject areas. Right. That's what I was gonna say is I think I have an idea in my head about how it's gonna kind of work and then I know that the kids are probably going to delve into it and take it us in different ways. And so, you know, I'm trying to think about how do I just initiate it to give them everything they need, but yet let them explore on their own. Yeah. And they'll teach me, I'm sure. Yeah. And that's a fantastic, I mean that's the, that's the great mindset to have. Yeah. Right. Like it's very hard to, to teach problem solving skills when we're not willing to model problem solving skills on our own. And that's a hard thing to do, but this kind of puts everybody in a, in a place where we can genuinely be in partnership with children and model those same skills that then transfer to all of these other other different areas and things.

Do you have anything else to add? Yeah, no, I mean, I, I would add, I would say the same thing that like if you've got the mindset that you can learn alongside the kids and that you're open to like seeing where they wanna take you with it. Yeah. Then that's like 99% of the whole thing, right? Like, it's okay to not know what you're doing. It's okay to like have questions before you start, you know, like, Yeah, We're here to answer them for you, but also it's okay to work them out with the kids and model that process and, and you know, hopefully everyone is in an environment that supports that because I think Right. That can be tricky sometimes for teachers, But yeah.

So Anna, thank you for sharing that date. September 14th from nine to one 30. I wonder what day of the week? What day of the week is that? It's a Wednesday. Of course it's, I know like they just don't understand. Come on remake learning. You should know better. We wanna go to this, but I have the flyer right here I wish I could download in the flyer, but I'll put it in PD plus. Oh, fantastic. Yeah, you can just put it in our little class thread Here. It's apparently in tandem with the Association of Science and Technology Centers. Ooh. - But anyway, but I, I, I'm pretty excited about it. Very cool. Awesome.

Yeah, so I wonder if we should talk a little bit about community activities because that might be a long conversation. I think it could be. So, so did anybody create their own activity or kind of brainstorm some ideas for activities to connect? 123 in literacy? We'll start there. Whether or not you put them in any kind of template or anything. I know I put that in there, but you don't have to.

I thought it was the big bad wolf. Oh there you go. That was The only thing I was thinking of. Just doing basic letter sounds too. So yeah, having them find the letter that makes this sound or you know, initially Yes. And then putting the letters together to build basic, you know, words cat and dog. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Lemme see if I, I had it open, I made one this afternoon to share, let me see if I can screen Share here. Share, share my screen. Oh I go to there. Let's see, will it work?

Oh nevermind. Okay, You can Put the link In. Yeah, I'll, I'll pop, I will pop the link in the chat because I don't have all of the system preferences. I thought I did but who knows, it's been a while. So we will just throw the link. This is also posted in PD plus but basically it's just a little rhyming robot activity where you take a tile, write the words on on the squares of the tile, leave an open space in the middle to put your robot and then it's just drive to pairs of rhyming words. So if we have sing and ring, we would drive your robot just using the touch buttons because not really worried about the coding part of it. This is more to focus on the literacy. So you drive it to ring and then to sing and then maybe play a sound to let you know that you got there or something or drive to you know, star and car. But to see if you could blend that you know, a figure out what the rhymes are and then drive your robot appropriately to, to get to those, those two places. This is a riff off of something that Laura taught us at the VEX educators conference with putting sight words on the field and having kids drive their robot to pick up a card. That's the sight word. Go drive your robot and read that word.

So, so I'm thinking about all of those steps and I mean I'm envisioning starting my school year out, not with hands-on robot right away, but maybe the first week or two talking about directions of left and right and forward and backward. Yeah. Maybe even having the kids, I think I have an old piece of tile like floor tiling that has squares on it and having them be the robot themselves. Yes. To give them an idea of what we're talking about before they put it into kind of this weird object. Yeah I think that's fantastic. Any time that you can kind of bring in more movement and and physicality to it. I think that's great. Particularly for kindergartners. Especially at the beginning of the year because we haven't learned how to sit still for very long yet many of us, I was just talking about turning things like this into games like Simon says like you could do Simon says and then use like coder card commands or just like, or the touch buttons. Use the touch buttons to hold it up. You know Simon says you know whatever. Right. But And then instead of them like saying the action, everybody has to move the way the robot would move. So if you hold up the turn left, everybody should turn left at the same time and then then they won't.

Right. And then we figure out which way is it. To be honest, sometimes I still have to do this to make sure I know which way left is. So I Totally get that.

Something that that I found with students last year when we went into a nearby school in Wilkins in Wilkinsburg is that we had kids sitting around a field so we had like a two by two field with 123 and they were sitting on all four sides of it. So at that point left and right becomes relative depending on where who's touching the buttons and who's looking at it. Right. So we often talked about like turn pink and turn blue I think are the two colors on the robot right? Turn pink and turn blue. Everybody can see the arrows in which way that's pointing because my left and your left are now opposite and that is a fluid enough situation to begin with.

So we would use sort of use that as as well just depending on how kids were, were oriented And that was one of those things that again like you don't, I never thought about it before it actually happened and I was like, why? I hear, I hear louder voices what's going on? And they're like, he says it's left but it's not like okay I got it, I got it, I got you. Cool. Here we go.

Yeah. Laura do you wanna share any of the other 123? I know you have a wealth of ideas and activities. Do you think I can share screen? Do you think that will Work? I think so. I think I just don't have it set up on my computer but you should be able to. Okay, so I'll just preface this with the my, so we did as a kindergartner first grade team, they did the beginning lesson, the A dragon in the village, I brought a a blank for a second. We did dragon in the village and the kids did a lot of like the hokey pokey like a little warmup because I didn't know left and right. We did that one a little bit and then they were ready to move on and then in Texas we are very standard space and space and they're like we don't have time to do a lot of this executive functioning skills. And so we put tied it into the content but now they're coming back and seeing like those executive functioning skills are so important that they gotta pay off like in the motor skills and all that just by doing it. So I'm gonna share you what my folder looks like and what I'm wondering is lemme see if the screen will share and I'll just show you. So I wish I could cra no it still says host disabled participant screen sharing.

So try one more time. But what I'm gonna show you is what we set up for in our district was just a folder and I'm the owner of the folder but then my teachers are all creating and dumping into that folder. So if you could set something up or have someone on your district level set that up for you and then people be willing to share. I can tell you my teachers were like, I can't do that. And then they saw what other people did and they're like, oh wait, I can do that. And so then today they were all brainstorming ideas of who's gonna take what part so then they can all help each other with the curriculum. So, but I will show share with you. That's not all right. ES is gonna let me share this screen now it working. So don't judge. So let me tell you suspend judgment. 'cause if you were looking for like a, you know, professional looking lesson plan, that's not what you're gonna get. You're gonna get teacher created. But if you see, can you see my screen now as it starts showing you? So this is the first grade ELA. So we have one for math, one for science, and this is the literacy one. This is actually the kindergarten one and it is all the lessons that they've created. So ending sounds by crystal giusti, medial bowels by crystal giusti onset sounds with rhyme sequencing a story, the little old lady who was not afraid of anything.

So we're hoping that we will build it out for the phonics practice that our kids have to do. And then anytime they have a story that someone creates anything for, we're hoping they'll throw it in the folder. And so then when you get into it, again you're suspending judgment, right? Of course you're just looking at a creative idea. You're not judging like how professional it looks because we are creating, so we talk about something we call 'em A CDC flashcards that look at the ending sound and they're gonna record their thinking on their VEX prac practice sheet. And then we always link it to whatever we call it the tess, but whatever we're linking it to. So those are the materials to put on the VEX build and they tell, you know, we're gonna put these letters and then we have these flashcards and then the kids play. It's like a game and then they have to code. So if this one I think was ending sounds, the ending sound, a mug is the G. So you would put all those letters out on the VEX build and then they would have to code to the Jeep. So you're not using the, the robot becomes an engagement piece. You're still doing the motor skills and the physical skills but they're excited to learn.

And then our talk today was about how are we gonna use that every single time like in a literacy station that you run through it and that's one of your literacy stations or one of your mass stations or is it going to be brought out when every once in a while so that it keeps the engagement. Because what we're scared then is they might get a little bit bored with doing the same thing every week. And so this is what a sequencing a story looks like. The little old lady who was not afraid of anything and I'll share any of this with you, they do not care. And so you have the, the materials to put on the VEX field and then you read the book and you have to do beginning, middle, and end of the story. So code to the beginning, code to the middle code to the end. 'cause that's a skill that we work on a lot of literacy. So that's sort of what our literacy looks like. And I can show you our math but since we're on, so since we were talking about the literacy, so I found that again suspend judgment, but maybe we'll help you think of some ideas and so we're building it out. Who knows after today they were, people were excited to build and just contribute then you didn't have to do all the work yourself.

Any questions or, I mean does that spark any ideas for y'all? Have y'all done anything similar or willing to share?

Lori, if you're talking, you're still muted. There We go. Can you hear me now? Okay, so I have three very competitive nephew and nieces. So I actually asked for assistance in coming up with something. So we played a game of hangman. So I had all the letters written out and they had to, had the code to the letter they wanted to guess for, you know, their work. But what was cool with one of my older nephews is I would say like is is L before or after P. So that kind of helped them with like alphabetical order for in the future. So just kind of doing some like skills over the summer, get them ready for second and third grade and, but they liked the fact that they came up with, they picked the game and helped make the card. So there was definitely like ownership to it. Yeah, that's awesome. And the whole idea of just being able to do like story sequencing, reading comprehension things. I mean you could act out parts of a story. It has always been my dream to act out where the wild things are with 123 robots. And you sort of me say this a bunch of times because I feel like you can use the art ring and everybody can make a wild thing and then you put them all in the field and you code them to do the wild rumpus.

Right. And the teachers can be a little, we can have a little Mac somewhere, but I just think it would be fantastic. It would be really fun. You could do similar things with go too like, like whatever your books that you're studying in third or fourth or fifth grade, then you can create the setting on the field. You can have them, you know, retell a story or they can have to add something to the field that's ri written or Yeah, - So they're, you're kind of finding different ways of working on comprehension, but you could still have the robot go to different points. Right. I was thinking about we have an activity, it's like go activity, I think it's community helpers and they, in that one they're like making something that a certain community person with a certain job in the community would do. But you could alter that to go with a book. So it could be like engineer something that could help your character solve a problem in whatever book or something like that. So you could take any of those really a lot of our activities and kind of tweak them to go with a specific book, which I think would be super fun. Yeah. Even something like putting characters out on the field and then it's, you know, you flip a card drive to the character that did this thing in the story.

Yeah. Or drive to the character that has this relationship with another character or something. Could be, could be really neat. Okay, I wanna do book parade but I haven't done it where you create the little VEX GO thing that y'all have there and then do Yeah. And then you maybe do write about your book and then you somehow put it on there and decorate it and then sort of drive it around. I think it would be cool, but I haven't done the lesson yet. Yeah, I think that would be fantastic. Like the parade float Lesson we did at a, at a teacher training, a couple of teacher trainings this summer we used that parade float sort of as like the, the end of the day activity. And there were, there were several groups of teachers that on their own made various and sundry book parades. One group did a Dr. Seuss themed parade and turned their robots into different characters and, and drove them around and stuff. But yeah, I think that is a, that's an awesome way to also sort of get some of the, the celebratory parts of, of literacy, right? Everybody gets really excited to tell you about their favorite books and that's important to also sort of sparking that love of reading and love of Literacy learning.

And I'm curious if You as a STEM teacher in like a, 'cause you're in sort of like a specials situation, right? Have you done anything to sort of tie in what kids are doing in their classroom with literacy to, to 123, or go And Exactly. And I, I really think that's one of my goals this year. So I I'm really inspired by what Laura is doing and exactly what you talked about Audra with other teachers. So right now I've done a lot of social studies integration, I've done a lot of science integration literacy. I, I tend to, you know, it's, it's hard to get people to get off the worksheets, but I really think that this will be a wonderful idea this year. It's, my goal is to get that literacy that ELA integrated and I wanna start first with K two. So we use a curriculum called Journeys. So again, I could easily look up vocab words. I can look up sight words like that could be something that could really be helpful for K two, but exactly what you're saying with three through five gonna try to work with my librarian. Oh wow. Because she does a lot of cool stuff with like book reports and really gets the kids reading chapter books and as you were talking about the book parade, I think that would be a wonderful integration.

I think that's our goal in my district. But like, you know, I really love what Laura's doing in her district and I think that's kind of our goal. But right now we're sort of starting out with just like specials time and then having those integrations like once or twice every nine weeks.

Yeah, I I was just Reminded like off of what thinking about Go and like social studies reminded me of when, like when this is from the phantom toll booth that I did this project, but there's a lot of other books that there's like Journeys or quests like in books, right? So if you have a book that has like a journey or a quest in it, you can make a map and have, and like have the students write about different parts of their journey or quest or their map and then have the robot go to each place and, and then find ways of like, I don't know, making it sort of interactive in some way so that that like you have to read what the other group wrote. You know, if every group, I'm kind of making this up as I go along, but like if like every group takes a place and they are gonna like have that place as their thing that they write about and then they can create it, they can make something written about it and then they can code the robots to go to them and then read them to each other. There's a bunch of different things you could do with that that would be really fun. Also, like a ton of choose your own adventure things. Yeah, yeah. Could happen as well. Right? Even with 123 or with Go Yeah.

Just putting various different things. Like I remember having story cards, I can't remember what they were called, but I can see them in my head. I had a bunch of those little story like decks of story cards and you could just attach those to your field and then, you know, code your robot to drive to three cards and tell a story about it. Right. Or write a, you know. Oh, like those dice, what are those d called with the pictures on them? Yeah. Oh we, I had cards and I had dice. 'cause we used to sit around and do the card game, which I always thought would be like a quick activity. It was like, oh, we have five minutes left, we'll do this. And then half an hour later we were still telling this story.

Yeah. But doing things like that also 'cause it just sort of ties in, you know, the, the the fun sort of gamification for lack of a better word of things that, that yeah. Often are, as you said, am tied to worksheets. The the beauty of of things like 123 or even like, like VR in some respects is that it gives you another way to sort of interact with that content in a way that maybe, you know, makes it a bit more interesting for the kids and a bit less cartwheels on my part to make that exciting. Right? Because who doesn't wanna code the robot to do anything? Doesn't matter what we're trying to get it to do. The the joy is being able to use the robot and get it to do the thing that you want or working with your partner to get your robot to do the thing that you want. Yeah. And I, I think you, I think you really hit hit it on the head there, Audra, about just the fun and engagement and when I first in integrated VEX GO, I was doing a lab lookalike and you know, a kid was developing a habitat and he wanted to write a story and I was like, oh no, we've gotta go to the next lesson. And it's like that idea of sort of leaning in and when you see a kid that's really engaged, like don't just say, okay, we're moving on to the adaptive claw.

Like to allow that kid to just explore. And I've really used a lot of the VEX GO activities as choice board activities. So like, you know, allowing an extra day of a STEM lab to just be, okay, well here's a couple that I laminated, like feel free, you know, take a VEX GO activity and feel free to work with your partner. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. Being able to incorporate some of this stuff into, into choice boards. Even if it's just sort of standing activities that are, you know, somewhat general where it's like, okay, you finished the task for the day, now add a reaction to your code or you know, find another way to get to whatever the place was, right? Like those, those sort of little extra prompts that you can do that for kids then changes the whole thing and it makes it a whole new experience. But they can be sort of similar prompts that can be used over, over a long time. Right? Like, erase the words on your board and try new ones. Erase the numbers one to nine and put the numbers 11 to 20. Yeah. You know, things, things like that. Another thing that we haven't talked a lot about is that you could do journaling about whatever you're doing with 123 or GO, you can create a journal and get the writing piece in there just on a day-to-day basis.

Just, you know, write a sentence about what you did. It would be fantastic and, and a lot of kids would be really motivated to write about that, To have sort of your robot journal and what a great artifact then to have as the year progresses. Right? Even if they only, you know, in kindergarten, first or second grade, even if they only started writing, drawing pictures of to represent what they did in kindergarten by the end of the year, you save all of those over time, right? There's, there's that qualitative, you know, evidence or proof if you need for people who may be more reluctant to be believe that this is a good thing, right? To be able to say, Hey, look at the beginning of the year, this is what they were happening and now this is in that child's own words, the things that they're telling you that they have learned by the end of the year. Because that's hugely, hugely powerful to be able to see from, particularly from the children's perspectives.

Yeah. Desiree, did you have something else? Another idea to share or something to add? Yeah, I have a Question. So Anna, you were talking about how, so how many kids do you typically have in a, in a classroom when you're doing the VEX? I usually have about 20 to 25 and I teach 21 sections. And then how many VEX like kits do you have for like one particular class? Because we're just getting started, so that's another thing that's kind, I usually have about 10. Okay. So it's usually, I usually like to have kids in groups of two or three. Okay. Have you ever had like groups of four? Is that a little too much or is it I've had groups of four, so I, I actually just did a summer camp with VEX IQ, which is the next level after VEX GO. And they actually really enjoyed being in groups of four, which I was very concerned about because I was like, oh, I need everyone to have a job. But I think that if you set that expectation and that routine, so like for example, I'll have two builders or two journalists, but like I don't want that one kid to just sit there. Right. And that's kind of my, that's the reason why I really try to get three in a group instead of four. Like I have a teacher kit, so all of them use my teacher kit.

Okay. And what I found is that if they have a job then it, it's gonna go okay. Right. - Like if they don't have like any agency, if they don't have any like skin in the game, then they're not going to, you know, sort of respond, if that makes sense. Gotcha. - Yeah. Like they, they kind of have to be like, okay, my job is to keep the engineering notebook or my, my job is to get the pieces from the kit and like when we have groups of three, sometimes I'll like make up a third job, you know, like the job would be like the builder and then the kit person. Like I'll just make it on the fly so that everybody feels like they have a responsibility.

Yeah. Because like when you guys go, go ahead Desiree. Like when you guys were showing, you and Laura were showing the different activities and I'm sitting here thinking in my mind like two, maybe three at the most and then I'm just, you know, kind of wanted to see how you guys, since you've implemented it in your classroom, how you know it, you see that it works before we get started in a few weeks. Yeah. And I think, yeah, I think you won't have a problem with groups of two groups of three. You just have to have that like expectation and that, that job like making sure that they know what they're doing. Yeah. Well in our case, we're only given one kit per classroom. So 20 students who are supposed to do it every day and you figure there's six robots per kit. So I think that that's where thinking we're gonna have larger than two to three kids in a group potentially. So I only have one VEX, 123 kit. Okay. - So I have the same amount of robots, right? Yes. Maybe, probably I think have six. And what I do is I break kids up into small groups and do you have the classroom bundle with the field? Yeah. Yeah. I'll have to, I'll have to post in PD+ I'm gonna make a note so I do that, but I'm going to post some of the pictures in my classroom.

So what I do is I kind of divide them into like mini little centers so that the kids know what they're doing. But like I can also, I like to, I like to walk around, you know what I mean? Like I, if I need to help like a adaptive student that needs like some help with the robot, I can do that. Otherwise I can kind of maneuver around and fix like little, little social issues. Otherwise, the small groups have really worked for me with VEX 123 and the kids love it. And then you can also give them the VEX 123 activities. So it's like, it's like personalized learning and also you, you know, you can integrate an ELA concept and then for your gifted children, there you go. You can personalize their journey with like an extension. Exactly what Audra was saying. I think the thing that you were talking about there, Anna, about being able to have sort of almost like center-based rotations because part of the, like there are many things that I love about 123. One of the things that I love about it the most is that there is super valuable learning that's not just about physically touching the robot, right? Like that's really just one piece of it. The understanding the task, taking turns, planning your path, planning your project, really you're using the robot to sort of test your idea.

But then when we're trying to debug our project and figure out what went wrong and what we need to change, like a lot of that stuff doesn't necessarily happen need to happen with the robot. So if kids are in, you know, pairs working together and then we have three groups that are at the planning station. We have three groups that are at the robot station and we have three groups that are at that sort of journaling choice board activity station, then you can move kids through there having fewer robots physically present in the classroom, but you can move kids through and everybody's still getting sort of that, that same exposure and same kind of, you know, meaningful learning just done in a little bit of a, of a unique sort of implementation where, you know, maybe this, this station is, you know, is I'm coding my partner, right? To make sure to check our project or we're trying to debug our project. So Aimee's gonna be the robot and I'm going to, she's gonna do all the things that we said and we're gonna figure out where our problem was, right? So this way later on we can go and check that or, or something like that. We also have, and if case anyone doesn't [email protected], we have lots of printable planning sheets that you can use with 123 and go.

And so we, we have a binder with all of them printed out, but so like, Because I make binders. Yeah. So you could have, you know, students in, in one rotation, one center of the rotation working on a planning sheet and then they would move next to the actual tryout your project, you know, code the robot and try out your project center and then onto the journaling center where they reflect. So I feel like I'm Teaching kindergarten over zoom. Again, You could laminate these and have kids write on 'em with dry erase or whatever and wipe Them off. Yeah. Or stick 'em in the little pocket. So something like that where like they color it in, they draw the path and then, you know, over time you can, you can test that. That's also a great way to like, if there's extra activities, right? You could just have a bunch of those sheets where you've drawn the path and then kids have to color it in or vice versa where there's a predetermined buttons and then they have to draw and figure out where the robot's gonna go based on those, those button presses and the starting point and things. Things like that. If you look at them, you'll get about a hundred ideas of things you can do.

And then there's also these like little printable touch buttons that you can lay out and plan your path with, with those as well. So that way it gives you a little more other stuff. And then there's also the art ring. I mean the art ring in and of itself can be a really great kind of, it can also potentially tie in, you know, a little bit of like the engineering concepts of sort of being able to have an idea of something you wanna create in your head and doing that. So if we're trying to, you know, use the robot to clear pom-poms off the tile and clean, you know, and clean your room or something, then maybe, you know, you have to build onto your art ring. Build a a tool that will help. So use pipe cleaners and maybe give it arms or put something flat in front of it to help you kind of push stuff like that. So that way that could also be one of those centers. So again, we're planning our project, we're developing the art ring, we're testing with the touch buttons, we're journaling about it and we're doing all of these different things that help support the literacy development that you're trying to do. Right? But that also help to support sort of the problem solving skills, 21st century skills.

Persistence, persistence, Habits of mind, my favorite thing to talk about. Yes. Turn taking all of that other good stuff that sort of supports the coding, right? Being a coder is not just being able to press the buttons in the right order, right? There's a lot of other things that factor into that. So being able to sort of use it that way is, is, is great. And you may then also be able to kind of hook kids that maybe are a little more less interested or a little more reluctant to, you know, I, I don't really like robots. Okay. But I do love this thing. I love coding my friend. That's my favorite thing to do. Right? I know some little people who definitely would identify with that.

Laura, did you have an idea? Just wanna add real quick about your materials. Each of my teachers gets six, gets the bundle with six. It's not enough for the whole class. So what we do is you get everybody's bundle for your first lessons. So everybody in your class works in twos to do the, and we share the materials. So the villa, the dragon in the village, everyone has it. And we learn the kids have a little bit of problem in kindergarten doing the buttons. So we do about two days of buttons on that be 123. And we pretty much move them really quick to the coder. And they love that coder. It is amazing. So then that's where we don't have as much materials. So then once they get the basics of coding, we go back to now our six, and now we're running it through stations. So over a week you will get your time with a robot, but you may not all be doing it on Monday. Your days might be Monday, someone else's day is Tuesday. So then that's how we're getting your touch time with a limited material. So I don't know if that helps you, but the sharing, I will tell you if any way you can do it in twos and every kid can do it like an A partner program it now. Okay. B partner program it now. Perfect.

And I see it six o'clock, so I'm sorry. Yeah, no, don't worry about it. That's a fantastic idea though.

So you, you would suggest that if we could possibly get to kits per teacher, that's how you feel It would be most effective If I would beg a company to give me that second set of kits. Because if you can have 10 per class and you're working in partners, no problem at all's when you're having, when you have more than two, someone isn't engaged and that's where the discipline comes in. But yes, if you only get one in the beginning, you're glad. But if someone else could give you some, that would be great. Thank you. Or even if you just like moved them around the building a little more, a little differently or you know, like you said in kindergarten, maybe you wouldn't start with the robots right away, away. So then the second graders can have all of them to get them acclimated and then shift them down or something. There may be some creative, creative implementation things to do. Also, Laura, with the, the, there's recently been a firmware push for the 123 robots that made them more touch sensitive, specifically to help little kid touch touchability. So if you up, when you update your robots for the year, you will notice like it's a, it's a pretty, a pretty big difference.

But yeah, that is the end, End of our time. Jeffrey and I are probably going to be the ones who are going to have to show all the other teachers in our school that this will work. So we're trying to already kind of predict what they're gonna say. I can't do this, I don't have enough, blah, blah, blah. So we're, we're trying to help to make this like, no, we really believe in this and we think this is gonna be great. This is how we have figured it out to, so that we can work for everyone. That's awesome. Yeah. And thank you for leading the charge on behalf of your, your teachers. It's, it's, it's, that's, that's a, that's a really, really important and wonderful, wonderful role to be in. And we're here to help as much as we can. So thank you. Thank you for being here with us. And yeah, and that's it. So everybody can post in PD plus post in our little class thread and, and next week we'll talk about more ideas and if you have more questions during the week or things that you wanna share about implementation stuff, like feel free to again, add to that thread. We can get many different conversations going in there. Yeah. And you said the recording will be in the PD plus? Yes. Okay. Okay.

So Even if teachers that you work with aren't here for this class, they can go back and watch. So, you know, if you have somebody that's like, oh, I'm looking for ideas for math, you know, oh hey, go to week two of my class and go watch that conversation. We had all sorts of different ideas. Okay. Terrific. Thank you. Well see you Alrighty. Thank you. Nice to meet, meet you. Thank you very much. We'll see you.

My camera was off this whole time.

That's okay. Apparently I said everybody the link that had my name in it, so you know, we're all learning.