Lightbot Planning Sheets Information

What We Think: As we said in a previous blog entry we found Lightbot to be more than just a simple activity to
use with young students. The idea of spatial reasoning when layered on top of Lightbot produced revealing
information about our students thinking and we use it with students from Grade 1 to 4.
Having our students build the 3D structure with linking cubes was challenging and we believe deepened our
students understanding of, not only the structure itself, but the steps needed (the computational thinking) to code
successfully. With the use of Lego people (acting as stand-ins for Lightbot in our real world) our students would
then plan out their coding sequence. Testing it out with the teacher or a peer paved the way for them to be
successful when they went to code on the device. In particular the idea of Reading the Blocks is something we
stress with all our students. Paired programming and debugging are key elements in learning to code. Our
Junior and Intermediate students working in Scratch are told the same thing. Students need to understand
coding is a language and these symbols have meaning just as letters have meaning, blocks have meaning.
As we continued to build our Community of Practice we developed the idea of having a record of students
planning and reflection. These planning sheets are the outcome. Students have a screen shot of the level and an
empty space at the bottom of the page. The student builds the structure and codes in the symbols using the 2 cm
square chart paper and attaches it to the bottom of the page.
In the empty box students can reflect on their learning or respond to different inquiries. For example: What
did you find difficult? Why? Is there another way to code this structure? Will it take more or less blocks to
code it a second way? Does planning out your coding before you code on the iPad (computer/Chrome Book)
help you? How?
In the empty box students could also draw their 3D structure understanding there are modifications to be made
to draw in 2D.
A point needs to be made that we do not limit the students coding to a specific number of blocks with these
planning sheets. In the actual program there is a limit to the number of blocks used and the use of Procedure
blocks P1 and P2 then come into play. There are two reasons for this. First, by not restricting the amount of
coding in the planning sheet we open the possibility of alternative coding trees (more than one solution) and
second, there remains one more challenge for the students to face using Lightbot. For example
OK I used 15 blocks to get through the structure on my paper, but in Lightbot there is only room for 9
blocks. I know there is a repeating pattern of these 3 blocks! I can use a P1 block to do all three and
that saves me 2 block spaces.
Finally, students can build their own structure and challenge another student to code it correctly using this
paper. Then the original creator is responsible to see if the coding is correct or needs debugging. A simple
photo of the original structure can be added to the top box as a record of the activity. Scaffolding questions can
be:
Are you building a structure that needs a new kind of coding block? If so, what does that coding block
do? What would be a good symbol to use for this new coding block?
Are you making a structure with two different staring points? Will that make a difference with the
coding? Why?
Which way is your Lightbot facing? Does that make a different in how you code?