STEAM CAMP As Professional Development

In a recent blog post, I reflected on the adoption of both the MAKER MOVEMENT and  STEAM in our schools.  I noticed that while the maker movement in our schools bubbled up from curious creative teachers who saw making as a way to engage students with hands-on minds-on learning, STEAM  mostly came down from school leadership looking for a framework that connected to content areas such as Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics.  

Both approaches reveal that our hands and our brains are interconnected, and sometimes,  our hands know before our brain does.  This week I got the chance to see this phenomena in action during the design of a STEAM summer camp for 5th and 6th graders from NCSU Encore program.   VREC (Vermont Rural Education Collaborative) offered STEAM fellowships to four educators interested in learning how they might bring STEAM into their own practice --and what resulted was a week filled with joyful powerful learning by both teachers and students. 

It’s easy to imagine joy in summer camp, but the same joy can (and should) be part of learning throughout the school year. This week gave me a chance to model how game design with STEAM supplies and maker tools can bring joy to learning while naturally connecting to nearly any curricular area. Tweak the prompt slightly, and students could be designing games that reinforce curricular concepts in social studies, literacy, science or math.

Why game design? Obviously games have a built in fun factor. Also, kids are already game experts! Combining something they know well (game creation) and new content knowledge can increase the stickiness of all types of new curricular concepts. Game design is also a great vehicle for bringing in the Gold Standards of Project Based Learning. - a sound pedagogical approach for teaching and learning. And when you combine game design with STEAM supplies and maker tools such as circuits, 3D printers, laser cutters, cardboard cutters, you can create a culture of craftsmanship where the students create what Ron Berger (An Ethic of Excellence: Building a Culture of Craftsmanship with Students) calls “beautiful works”. So stick with me over the next couple of blog posts as we explore how game design can be used to transform most any curricular content into a joyful learning experience where the students own their learning with pride in their eyes. 

During the week long summer camp, I used the same sequence I use across my CREATE MAKE LEARN school based residencies. We started the Inspire, Create Confidence, and Meaningful Making sequence with the essential question "How might we INSPIRE our students and CREATE CONFIDENCE our teachers and students need to MAKE SOMETHING MEANINGFUL?" 

During part 1 of this  blog posts series, I’ll share how we used the first two phases (INSPIRE)  and (CREATE CONFIDENCE) in our learning design, while the next blog post will pick up with what happens when students take everything from these first two phases and use it for MEANINGFUL MAKING and  build something they are inspired to make.

Phase 1: Inspire

Even before the first tool came out, the Inspire phase did the important work of creating motivation needed to engage campers into the learning they would do this week.  We opened Day 1 with introductions and creative light up  name tags where campers built their first circuit.

The STEAM Fellowship educators who joined the camp brought their own middle-grades pedagogical toolkit with them, and they quickly arranged a circle of chairs in the room that could host  a morning meeting, and that same circle formation returned throughout the week at transitions, after lunch, and again to close each day, often with a quick grounding game that got students physically and mentally re-centered before the next activity starts. The circle scaffolded relationships and belonging. They were short, but purposeful. I loved learning new prompts that the STEAM fellowship educators brought to the circle each day.

We quickly moved outside for  a "Four Corners: Game Edition" icebreaker  where students physically sorted themselves by the kind of game they like most: physical, tabletop, video, or card games.  Not only did this take advantage of the beautiful Vermont summer weather we were lucky enough to experience, it also served as a preview  of the different types of games we would be creating this week and that the week would engage both our minds and our bodies. 

While outside, we quickly moved into  an outdoor cat and mouse  physical game built with the use of Makey Makey circuits. Students were inspired by playing  a physical game where they  got to  run around, trigger switches using conductive and insulating objects to reach one of two cheese buckets.  This reminded students of the role of conductors and insulators in circuit design without sitting through a review lecture. 

We started with these game rules, but eventually modified them a bit to fit the dynamics of our group. 

• Your team huddles near its home (Start Zone) 

• Pick 1 person to be your cat. The cat will guard the Danger Zone.
  The rest of you will be mice and huddle in the Start Zone 

• When the Game Master signals “Go” one person from your team will race towards the cheese.  They must cross the Danger Zone without being caught/tagged by the cat  to land in the Safety Zone.  If that cat catches you, you become a cat for the team that catches you. 

• Once in the Safety Zone, they must use an objects they find here to access the cheese  without stepping into the No Trespassing Zone. 

• When you  successfully make contact with the cheese container causing a successful signal to sound, the game master will give you a piece of cheese point.

• REPEAT until all the mice have a chance to try crossing the cheese.  In the last round, the original cat can become a mouse so they get the final turn. 

PreGame Setup by facilitatorrs: 

It required a little setup ahead of time, but it turned out to be a very engaging way to introduce the MAKEY MAKEY Circuit board with lots of movement.   We connected the Makey Makey UP arrow to a metal "cheese bucket" and the DOWN arrow to a plastic cheese bucket filled with water.  (This allowed us to introduce the concept of 'water' as a conductor as well as metal.)   We, then, connected a metal pole held up by plastic chairs to EARTH on the Makey Makey.   A ScoreBoard Scratch program was loaded onto the computer. 

** Note: if you notice unexpected behavior from your Makey Makey when setup outside, it might be caused by the ground you are standing on. Put insulating cardboard under the metal bucket. Note that our chairs had a built in insulator since they were made of plastic. 

Phase 2: Create Confidence

Inspiration creates the want. Next phase - Create Confidence. The Create Confidence  phase runs on short, deliberately incomplete lessons  in the form of 30 - 45 minute Skill Builders focused on creating confidence with one new tool or process, no attempt at full mastery. A Skill Builder isn't trying to teach everything about a laser cutter or a circuit board. It's trying to get a student to the point of "I understand enough about this that I could keep learning it on my own or with a mentor  whenever I need to." That's a very different goal than competence — it's a foothold, not a finish line, and it's what lets a student walk into the meaningful making projects later with the confidence to try using  unfamiliar tools. 

On Day 1, we started building confidence with circuits using Makey Makey and FunKey circuit boards.

This first skill builder activity was meant to create a quick win as students plugged their circuit board into their chromebooks and created game controllers from playdough and other materials.

We looked at different "Cat and Mouse" video games created with Scratch, and selected this one as a test for our first game controller.   Using video games created with Scratch to test our game controllers  allowed the campers to see the connection between computer science and game design.  We could quickly "look inside" at the code use to create each game. 

The campers made their first game controller using play dough, then quickly experimented with other materials. 

We then gave campers the challenge of creating a prototype for a retro "Scrappy Joystick". Some used Scratch projects to test their joysticks while others preferred the Makey Makey Selfie-arcade games. 

Our goal for Day 2 was to CREATE CONFIDENCE with simple circuits,  the laser cutter, and  a new circuit board called micro:bit .  We also introduced the MDA of Game Mechanics and focused on TableTop games. 

 

Following our desire to keep campers moving, we introduced the MDA of Game Design with an outdoor game of THIS or THAT.  In our morning circle, we asked campers to name their favorite tabletop game. This list  was used to feed the first round of our THIS or THAT tournament where campers voted on which game had the best Game Mechanics. The beautiful summer weather allowed us to hold the tournament outside and vote with our feet.  The second round asked students to decide which game had the best Game Dynamics, and the last round focused on Game Aesthetics. 

Once back inside, the students rotated between three Create Confidence skill builders.  Steam fellowship educators also got the opportunity to learn from or practice facilitating skill builders.  I especially loved the powerful questioning techniques that our STEAM fellows used  to deepen the learning for our campers. 

The  Micro:bit Skill Builder  created confidence with a student friendly circuit board called Micro:bits. The campers were excited to learn that they would be able to keep their new micro:bit circuit board. We used a MakeCode micro:bit tutorial to turn their micro:bit into a dice.  This introduced campers to several important computer science concepts including VARIABLES, RANDOM, and LOGIC. 

The  Laser Cutter Skill Builder  created confidence with using Cuttle.xyz to design assets for our game pieces.  First, the students learned how to create a hexagon game tile as a way to familiarize themselves with the process of creating an svg file. They also practiced our method for sending files to the Glowforge laser cutter.  They also learned how to use Cuttle.xyz to turn an SVG graphic from the Noun Project into a game piece. See my post on why I think Cuttle.xyz  is a game changer for students creating with maker tools like laser cutters, Cricut and other cutters, and even 3D printers. 

The  Simple Circuits skill builder created confidence with building circuits and switches that turned LED lights off and on.  Students used hexagon tiles they cut from the laser cutter and copper tape to create their switches. We, also, brainstormed how circuits and switches might be used in game mechanics.   

On the morning of Day 3 we offered a couple more advanced skill builders using the micro:bits.  One skill builder taught the students how to use the built in radio of the micro:bit to send data to another micro:bit on the same channel.  The students enjoyed coding different features like sound alerts into their micro chat programs.  The next skill builder demonstrated how to control external components with the micro:bits.  Both of these skills could expand the potential of the micro:bits to be used in game design. 

The confidence created with these skill builders became obvious as the campers started asking “When can we start building our own game?” We circled up again with a prompt "How might you use what you learned this week to design a game that uses circuits in at least one way?" and sent them out  to brainstorm during an outdoor reflection time. By the afternoon of Day 3 the students were ready for a MEANINGFUL MAKING challenge.

Although neither the Inspire nor Create Confidence phase asks students to make anything of their own yet, these first two phases provided students with two key ingredients -- inspiration or motivation and confidence or foundational skills that would lead to craftsmanship and more ideas as they prepared to brainstorm creating something original.

If you skip the Inspire phase, the Skill Builders become just another rotation of disconnected tech demos, with no throughline for why any of it matters. If you skip the Create Confidence phase, and the open-ended Meaningful Making phase turns into enthusiasm with nowhere productive to go, because nobody has enough command of the actual tools to act on their ideas.

Put them together, in sequence, and something different happens: a student walks into an open-ended challenge already believing two things at once — this is worth doing, and I have what I need to start. That's the setup for Phase 3: Meaningful Making. Stay tune for Part 2 -blog post to see the process and Game prototypes our campers made this week during their Meaningful Making studio time.

The Adoption Journey From Makerspaces to STEAM classrooms

I was sitting at my computer trying to finish the final edits on a short video from my most recent STEAM residency. Five minutes. That was my goal. Keep it to five minutes.

Explaining how I engineered this game controller

How do you tell the story of a whole year of  learning in five minutes? How do you capture the aha moments of teachers gaining creative confidence while guiding their students through hands-on, minds-on projects? Or the moment a sixth grader stood in front of his parents at our culminating STEAM event — face absolutely beaming — explaining in real detail how he'd engineered his own game controller? His parents are trying it out, laughing, asking him questions, and he's just lit up. Easier said than done.

This  was a different kind of STEAM  residency model for me. Instead of coming in for a week or two and leaving, we spread the Graded 4 - 6 residency across  across the  school year. I kept coming back (onsite and through Zoom) coaching teachers through the various stages of project-based learning with a STEAM-integrated focus. We had time to build something deeper — a relationship with the teachers, a chance to try things, see what happened, adjust, and try again.  The residency wrapped up with a culminating event engaging the community, a debrief with educators about how extending this project might enrich their curriculum, and a folder full of both lesson plans and resources that could expand on what we created collaboratively. 

Community engagement during our culminating event - STEAM Night

 By the time I sat down to edit, I had plenty of media, plenty of moments, plenty of evidence of what learning through creating and making can look like when connected to Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics — not to mention English Language Arts and Computer Science.

As I scrolled through photos and video clips, I started thinking about how my maker residencies were now called STEAM residencies. The educators I know who used to call themselves Maker Educators — people who built makerspaces, who found funding for laser cutters in school libraries, who handed kids copper tape and LEDs and said "figure it out" — a lot of them are now calling themselves STEAM educators. I found myself reflecting about this shift from Maker Education to STEAM education.  

I got curious enough to ask my AI assistant to help create a timeline of how both movements moved through their adoption cycles.

Two Movements - PDF version

I was surprised to find that Maker Education and STEAM grew up almost at the same time but spread through schools in completely different ways. Maker education bubbled up from individual teachers who loved the pedagogical promise of learning through creating and making. STEAM mostly came down from school leadership looking for a framework that connected to academic subjects — especially science — and one that helped the arts, engineering, and practical arts survive budget conversations.

I have witnessed many shifts during my own history with emerging technologies.  I've been doing project-based learning since the 1980s, and I've always been the person helping schools adopt emerging technologies. Typewriters to computers, computers to the internet, web design with html  to Google tools, creating digital games to coding physical artifacts with circuit boards, laser cutters, and 3D printers. Sure, the emerging technologies were cool, but it was never about the tools — it was about transforming what learning could be.  As I reflected on the shift from MAKER EDUCATION  to STEAM focused learning, I started to ask questions like: 

"Was it just a label change, or did something more fundamental shift? Does it matter? And what does it mean for students? Does it change our professional development needs? "

Create Make Learn Summer Institute

By 2012, I had come to believe that educators didn't just need to learn new tools to transform learning — they needed to actually feel what it was like to learn through creating and making  themselves. Immersively. Hands-on. Not a tutorial, but the real experience of what learning through creating feels like from the inside. That's where Create Make Learn came from. And as it happened, 2012 was right around the moment the maker movement was picking up steam in education (pun very much intended). Making gave project-based learning new materials, new processes, new ways for kids to turn ideas into physical, shareable things. The Create Make Learn community grew up around that energy — educators learning from each other, trading ideas, finding connection with people who were excited about the same hands-on, minds-on approach. The students were always the real beneficiaries, but the educators needed each other to get there.

That community grew steadily from 2012 to 2020. Then the pandemic hit, and all of it went into storage — literally. Every ounce of energy in a school building went toward getting kids back in the classroom and keeping them six feet apart. Hands-on, collaborative, materials-heavy learning simply wasn't possible.

The post-pandemic return has been harder than I expected. Schools are searching for ways to include the hands-on learning  from the maker movement while simultaneously dealing with learning loss, higher social-emotional needs, funding cuts, and teacher attrition. It's a much harder landscape than the one I started in.  However, we are seeing some schools shift from makerspaces in schools to STEAM classrooms. 

STEAM had been quietly developing in parallel to the maker movement the whole time. But where maker education was wonderfully open-ended, STEAM offered something school leaders could point to — a clearer connection to academic subjects, a name that survived a budget meeting, and a visible place for the arts. To a lot of school leaders, it felt more anchored and more fundable than an open-ended makerspace. So the energy of maker education, in many schools, quietly turned into STEAM programming.

But this was much more than a label change.  Maker education was mostly driven by individual early-adopter teachers who wanted it and pushed for it.  For over a decade, Create Make Learn was a vehicle for maker educators to connect, collaborate, and grow. 

Meanwhile STEAM is gathering momentum in a different way  — school leaders deciding they want STEAM programming and then looking for teachers to design and run it. That's a fundamentally different starting point, and it creates a fundamentally different professional development need.  

Teachers and students learning to use laser cutter in a
in a residency at  Newport City Elementary 

As I find myself really working with teachers to build meaningful STEAM experiences or STEAM residency,  I start with the first stage of DESIGN THINKING -- EMPATHY!! and a close look at the each school's unique landscape — its space, its tools, its goals, its culture.   Only then, can we start to DEFINE the outcomes we are looking for from a STEAM residency.  The "How might we " question leads to a wild BRAINSTORMING or IDEATE stage which eventually leads to a PROTOTYPE design for the residency. Together we TEST  our prototype and gather feedback from both teachers and students. 

I'd always been familiar with the artist-in-residency model — an artist visits a school for a stretch of time and works with students toward something real: a mural, a concert, a finished piece.  I started to similarities with my work with teachers and students and  the residency model.   They both have similar  ingredients: sustained time in a school, modeling, hands-on experience, and a product or event that teachers and students build together.  With  mentoring and coaching as teachers learn, you have both embedded professional learning and engaging student experiences.   I started to more deeply  reflect on the past decade from my early work with the Tarrant Institute to my most recent collaborations with the Vermont Arts Council.

With the help of my AI assistant, I started to more  examine my recent STEAM residencies to identify the elements that made it a powerful practice.   Here is the visual representation that my AI assistant created from my reflections. 

PDF Version - Potential of STEAM Residency

But this is just the beginning of an inquiry that I hope you'll take with me.   The "What if"  question that frames my thinking these days seems to be ....

 “How might we design STEAM based residencies that fit inside the constraints that our schools face,  while still carrying the spirit of what made the original Create Make Learn institutes work: the inspiration, the immersion, the community."

If you are a school that  would like to prototype  STEAM residencies with me (ranging from single days, to multi-day, to a year long STEAM residency),  let's talk. 

You can reach me at ldelabruere@gmail.com

Introducing Computer Science to Younger Learners with BeeBots

                            From Procedural Writing To Coding

Recently I was visiting my grandson's  first-grade classroom to watch his class present their procedural writing — Julian's book was titled How to Make Scrambled Eggs. After I listened to him read each step I told him that the procedural writing they were doing in class was similar to the coding activities we do during our visits together.  His eyes lit up!

On the way out, I mentioned this to his teacher and she invited me to come back as a special  guest to introduce this idea to both the first grade and second grade classrooms (My grandson, Oliver, is in second grade in the same school).  I was excited to bring one of my STEAM residency

When I was planning the visit,  I followed the same design thinking process I use to customize all my STEAM integrated maker/CS residencies.  I asked the teachers what their students were currently studying. The first graders were exploring change and cycles. The second graders were working on measurement.  I LOVE the challenge of  connecting STEAM and CS to curricular content.  Soon an idea started  buzzing around in my head: bees making honey.

As I was thinking about the change from nectar to honey, it seemed the perfect way to introduce  computer science concepts  to younger learners.  PLUS-- I had access to a fleet of little coding robots that looked like BEES!  The journey from flower to honeycomb gave us a chance to understand how an algorithm is a a series of steps where a bee flies to flowers (inputs), collects nectar (data), returns to the hive (processing), passes it bee-to-bee (transformation), fans it dry in the honeycomb (output). Every step matters. Every step is in order. Change the sequence and there's no honey.  I couldn't wait to get started designing this lesson.    

Why Bee Bots? 

I  have access to a variety of robots that my grandchildren (and other younger learners) love to code, but I decided on the BeeBots for several reasons:

• Of course, they looked like BEES and provided a strong visual connection to the 'change' process we would explore.
• There was no need to install apps/software/logins.  As a guest teacher, I didn't have a relationship with the IT staff in the building, nor was a I familiar with the process that would be required. 
• It reduced the 'screen time' element from the lesson.  We were working with our hands, our  minds, and our manipulatives.  We were NOT introducing TWO new elements (software AND a robot we can code).  
• The limited time that comes with being a guest teacher, meant that the lesson objectives had to be achievable in a shorter amount of time.  (Of course, I hoped to inspire the teachers to explore additional resources I would leave with them about introducing computer science to younger learners. 

If you're new to BeeBots , I highly recommend watching this model  introductory lesson from Mr. Vacca  introduce Coding with BeeBots to first and second graders (7 minutes) 

Creating the  Read-Aloud and Coding Challenges

I knew I wanted to ground the lesson using a read-aloud. I have been working on designing STEAM and CS residencies. inspired by literature for the past few years, and love to watch students' response to literature.  I prompted my AI assistant with  just the right information from my evolving lesson plan  to come up with a draft story.  

After tweaking the draft story to better fit my lesson design, I added some coding challenges that would engage the students while learning computer science concepts.  When seeking to engage students with hands on projects, I strike for the those projects to be minds-on experiences where the learning takes place -- not just dessert projects.  

Here is read-aloud  and coding challenges written for this lesson.Buzz and the Honey Journey,

Every page has a coding challenge embedded right in it.  The goal is for the story to be read aloud, one page at a time, then to have the students experience the coding challenge --not as a worksheet, but as as a puzzle to solve with their robots, right then and there, on a story map spread out on the floor in front of them.

How to integrate coding challenges with the story 

Example from Page 1: Buzz wakes up and wiggles her wings. Challenge: Can you make your BeeBot wiggle — without moving forward? (Students use creative problem solving to discover that left-turn + right-turn = a wiggle.  

Creating the Story Map

Story Map PDF 

I often create a grid  using blue painters tape on the classroom floor to use with Bee-Bots.  But because this was not my classroom and I had limited time 'in the classroom' I created a half dozen story maps using poster board.  First I drew a 3×4 grid where each square is exactly 6 inches, which is exactly one BeeBot step. I pasted story images in each cell: the hive, the old oak tree, the babbling brook, the sunflower patch,  the lavender and clover, the pollen field, the marigold garden, additional bees, and the honeycomb.

The story Map

A 4×3 grid of 6 inch squares fits perfectly on one piece of standard poster board.  You can use this PDF to help you construct the story map-- you don't have to lay out the images in the same order. Also,  feel free to resize as desired. Make sure to paste the image corners down flat. Even a slightly lifted corner will catch the BeeBot's wheels and throw off the whole path. 

Introducing computer science to younger learners

I started the lesson by introducing the concept of computer scientist as a career. I asked  students: "Does anyone know what a computer scientist does?. We spent some time talking about ways that computer scientist influence our lives  - from video games to practical inventions  we use every day. 

Research tells us that foundational ideas about who belongs in certain careers begin forming around ages 7 and 8. If students — especially girls and students from underrepresented communities — have never been invited to see themselves as coders, that window begins to close before we even know it was open. A single hour with a BeeBot won't change everything. But it can plant a seed. It can let a child hold a robot and think: I did that. I made it go there. I'm a programmer. This is a career that people like me can choose. 

Then I had  students try to "program their teacher" — She stood in the middle of the classroom and I asked them to give her directions to reach the tissue box. Just like a robot, she followed their instructions literally. When they said "go forward," she went forward. When they forgot to tell her to turn, she  walked in the wrong direction. They learned immediately: computers do exactly what you say, not what you mean. This started to really understand the computer science concept of  programming or coding. 

Introducing the robots

It was now time to introduce the BeeBot itself — letting each pair hold one, count its buttons, explore its underside. We talked about safety rules the same way we talk about rules for any tool in a makerspace: " these rules keep the robot safe, not just you. The most important: never pull the robot backward. Lift it instead." (If you have limited Bee-Bots, you can simply have students take turns being the 'student demonstrator' as you lead the class through the lesson, and then use your Bee Bots as stations.

Before we started the read-aloud of our story, I let the students freely explore how they might get their robot to reach the tissue box (which was still on the floor of their classroom).  This quickly turned into a chaotic huddle of students and their robots as they approached the tissue box, but it also filled the room with exciting energy. 

To transition to our next activity, I selected a student to demonstrate how to "code" the robot more intentionally and think ahead of the task you wanted the robot to complete. 

The Read-Aloud and Coding Challenge

As we prepared for the Read-Aloud,  I distributed a poster board/story map to each group of 4 students.   Two pairs of students (previously assigned by their teacher) worked on each map simultaneously — one student physically coded the robot, while the other planned and  verbally directed the next move.  I reminded the students to switch roles frequently. This kept everyone engaged and gave each student meaningful time with the robot.

Before we started our read-aloud, we practiced a classroom signal for each student to STOP, TURN OFF the ROBOT, and LISTEN for the next instruction.   We practiced this a few times, since I knew that transitioning from "freely coding your robot" to LISTENING to the next page in the read-aloud might the tricky part of my lesson design. 

Introducing CS Concepts and Vocabulary 

I was intentional about introducing computer science vocabulary throughout — but always anchored to what students were already doing. Here's how some CS concept appeared naturally in the lesson:

Algorithm sounds like a big word, but the students loved saying it and quickly understood it to mean a series of steps that you can repeat to achieve a tasks. 

Sequencing was everywhere. Every time a student planned a path from one story stop to another, they were sequencing. I kept returning to the procedural writing connection: "You know how Julian's scrambled eggs recipe wouldn't work if you cracked the eggs after you cooked them? Same thing here. Order matters."

Debugging became the most powerful mindset shift of the day. When a BeeBot veered off  the poster board instead of toward the sunflower, I didn't let students feel like they'd failed. I said: "You just found a bug. That means you're a real programmer." By the end of the session, students were using the word "debug" naturally  instead of 'its not working."  

With the help of my AI assistance, I created some additional resources to help both teachers and students gain confidence with Computer Science Concepts and Vocabulary.  You might, also,  want to experiment with a Bee-Bot Emulator on our interactive white board as an additional station.

CS Concepts and Vocabulary Cards can be used by both teachers and students to gain confidence with computer science.

Adding measurement skills

For second graders, the BeeBot provided an opportunity to practice using the measurement skills they had been learning.  Make sure to have rulers or measuring tapes handy as you ask questions like:   "How far does the robot move when you code it to GO forward.   How wide is each square on the storymap? "  After completing a path, students counted how many squares their robot had traveled, then measured and calculated the total distance in inches. Some pairs compared two different routes between the same stops and asked: which is shorter?

What I'd Do Again (And What I'd Tweak)

✓

Start with the body, not the robot.

Programming the teacher first grounded the abstract idea of "giving a machine instructions" in something students already understood from their own bodies and daily language.

✓

Free exploration before structure.

Letting students play freely with the BeeBot before the story began — "can you get it to the tissue box?" — built confidence that made the structured coding activity feel safe to attempt.

✓

Use a student to model, not just the teacher.

Following the Mr. Vacca model lesson, I asked a student (my grandson Julian, who'd been practicing) to demonstrate coding the BeeBot for his classmates. Peer modeling worked better than I expected. 

✓

Using Coding  planning worksheets  

I photocopied coding planning worksheets for each students, but ended up not using them during our limited time together.  I decided to not interrupt the exploratory flow of the creative problem solving that accompanied each coding challenge.  Instead I recommend that the classroom teacher use these planning sheets  during a followup activity to review, reinforce, and reflect the computational thinking process that the students experienced.  Not using the planning sheets on the first day is more inline with constructivist learning. However, I do feel that using them during a follow up session provides our younger learners  an opportunity for deeper learning and metacognition. 

Everything You Need to Try This

I've packaged everything from this lesson so another teacher can pick it up and run with it. You don't need to be a CS expert. You don't need to have done this before. You need a BeeBot (or two), a piece of poster board, and a desire to let your students explore the joy of computational thinking. 

 Lesson Resources

• 
  
  Buzz and the Honey Journey — Read-Aloud StoryAn illustrated read-aloud with a coding challenge embedded on every page. Print as a booklet or display on a screen.
• 
  
  BeeBot Story Map — 3×4 Grid (Poster Board)A landscape-format map with 5 numbered story stops, decorative landmarks, coordinate labels, a legend, and a BeeBot button reference. Print landscape, mount on poster board. Each cell = 6 inches.
• 
  
  BeeBot Coding Cards — Full SetSequencing, loop, debug, algorithm, event, and decision cards — each tied to the honey journey story. Includes a teacher guide explaining how and when to use each card type, plus key discussion questions.
• 
  
  90-Minute Lesson Plan Lesson Sequence, timeline, objectives, NGSS + ISTE standards alignment, vocabulary table with kid-friendly definitions, differentiation strategies, and formative assessment prompts.

🐝 Thank you to Ms. Manolis and Ms. Gargiulo and their first and second graders in NYC public schools for iniviting me into their classroom to introduce computer science to them.

You don't need to be a computer science teacher to teach computer science. You just need a story worth following, a robot worth coding, and the belief that every child in your classroom is already a computational thinker — they just haven't been told yet.

An additional thanks to Mr. Flint from Charlotte Elementary School for loaning us some additional Beebots.