Sixth Grade Finch Project

Last year, we participated in the robot finch loan program offered through BirdBrain Technologies, the company which manufactures the devices.  The robot finch is a wonderful coding tool that provides students with hands-on coding opportunities.  The students enjoyed these so much that our technology teachers, Mrs. Lambert and Mr. Kwietniewski, decided to buy them for their STREAM program.  This opened up some great opportunities for our library program to collaborate with STREAM.

The robot finch can be controlled with many programming languages.  Our students used Scratch to control the finches.  The finch comes equipped with two wheel motors, LED lights, a temperature sensor, buzzer, and touch sensors.  These capabilities provided students with seemingly endless programming opportunities.  The hands-on nature of the robot finches also made it fun and easy for students to see their programming skills come to life!

After some reflection on last year, we decided that sixth grade would be the grade level that would work most in-depth with the robot finches.  Instead of sticking with just an hour of code in December, Mrs. Lambert's sixth graders visited the library throughout all of December to work with the finches!  Each section enjoyed three full class periods for this project.

Learning how to code with the finches.

On the first day of the finch project, students received a brief introduction to the finches, including how to set up the finch on the student laptops, how to properly care for the finches, and which Scratch coding commands would be useful for their programs.  Students were then instructed to work in groups of 2-3 to complete a finch tutorial.  This packet, adapted from the finch education website, introduced students to finch features and some coding strategies.

Once students had completed the tutorial, they were invited to participate in a challenge of their choosing.  There were four coding challenges the groups could choose from: traffic light, dance party, remote control, and drawbot.  Each of the challenges were adapted from beginner level Scratch lessons found on the finchrobot.com website.  There were a number of groups that were able to tackle multiple challenges during their project time in the library.

Teams spread out in the library to work on their challenges.

DrawBot was a favorite challenge for this year!

Multiple groups participated in the DrawBot challenge.

It's great seeing your program come to life!

Masking tape mazes helped students tackle the remote control challenge.

There's lots of room in the library to spread out!

Overall, we were very pleased by the creativity and effort displayed by the STREAM students.  The robot finch project was a great way to celebrate #hourofcode and get students some hands-on coding time.  When Mrs. Lambert asked her students how they enjoyed their time in the library, many mentioned that they would have liked additional time with their finches!  A special thank you to Mrs. Lambert for making this possible!

Robot Finch Takeover!

November/December 2018 was an especially busy time in the Iroquois Middle School Library!  We were lucky to be awarded with 10 robot finches thanks to the loan program offered through BirdBrain Technologies, the company which manufactures the robot finches.

A robot finch is a hands-on tool which allows students to hone their computer coding skills.  The robot finch can be controlled with many programming languages (we chose to use Scratch because students had some familiarity with it).  The finch comes equipped with two wheel motors, LED lights, a temperature sensor, buzzer, and touch sensors.  These capabilities provided students with seemingly endless programming opportunities.  The hands-on nature of the robot finches also made it fun and easy for students to see their programming skills come to life!

Students were able to program the robot finches by using Scratch.

In order to maximize the amount of time students were able to spend with the robot finches, Mrs. Lambert and Mr. Kwietniewski were gracious enough to bring their STREAM classes into the library for a finch coding project.  Between both teachers, there are 24 sections of STREAM, meaning upwards of 400 students in grades six through eight enjoyed class time with the finches.  We decided that each group would have three class periods to explore the finches.

On the first day of the finch project, students received a brief introduction to the finches, including how to set up the finch on the student laptops, how to properly care for the finches, and which Scratch coding commands would be useful for their programs.  Students were then instructed to work in groups of 2-3 to complete a finch tutorial.  This packet, adapted from the finch education website, introduced students to finch features and some coding strategies.

Students worked on the finch tutorial before tackling challenges.

Some groups even named their finches!

Students enjoyed the hands-on coding experience with the finches.

Once students had completed the tutorial, they were invited to participate in a challenge of their choosing.  It took students varying amounts of time to complete the tutorials; some groups finished in one class period, while others needed multiple periods to finish.

There were five coding challenges the groups could choose from: traffic light, dance party, music maker, remote control, and drawbot.  Each of the challenges were adapted from beginner level Scratch lessons found on the finchrobot.com website.  Before starting each challenge, students were encouraged to do their best, as outstanding challenge outcomes would be video recorded for the Robot Finch Hall of Fame!  There were a number of groups that were able to tackle multiple challenges during their project time in the library.

Mr. K. observes his seventh grade students work on drawing shapes with the finches.

Students work to get the finch through a masking tape maze.

There were some truly remarkable coding projects created by our students!  Some of the best projects created came about by students who were committed to bringing an idea to life, or by those that took risks by exploring a variety of the finch's capabilities.  Many of these dedicated students visited the library during study hall to further perfect their coding projects.  All of the recorded projects can be found on the Iroquois Middle School Library website here.

Students worked on coding projects in order to be inducted into the hall of fame!

In the video above, students used the finch's buzzer feature to play the tune "Africa" by the band Toto.

Students from this video created a maze out of all of the Harry Potter books in the library.  They activated the finch's touch sensors in order for the finch to complete the book maze unassisted.

On the last day of the project, we invited all students to participate in a survey about their experience coding with the robot finches.  The feedback received will be helpful as we move forward with STEM/robotics-related activities and curriculum.  We will be able to incorporate student suggestions into these offerings.  Of the 381 survey respondents, 99 said they were interested in extra coding opportunities (and there were 160 students who said maybe)!

Overall, we were very pleased by the creativity and effort displayed by the STREAM students.  The robot finch project was a great way to celebrate #hourofcode and Computer Science in Education week.  A special thank you to Mr. Kwietniewski and Mrs. Lambert for making this possible!