Students at Manor Oaks School in the New Hyde Park-Garden City Park School District have been immersed in technology thanks to a Coding and Introduction to Robotics class implemented in the district this year.
The course, led by teacher Lara Holzkamp at both Manor Oaks and Hillside Grade School, provides students with a solid foundation and understanding of how to think and problem-solve through coding and programming. Activities and lessons are designed so that the children can work independently, paired with a partner or in small groups, depending on the activity. Learning to communicate ideas and solutions effectively to each other is another important aspect. All ideas are tried and tested, and students are encouraged to discover what works and doesn’t work and make the necessary adjustments.
Students are using platforms such as Code.org and Scratch.mit.edu in the course, which is scaffolded and builds upon the lessons learned in one grade to progress to more challenging activities at the grade above. They also have the opportunity to code various types of robots and see how they can maneuver them to solve challenges. Using the knowledge they have from computer coding, they program robots such as BeeBots, Cubelets, Lego WeDo 2.0, Ozobots and Pro-Bots. Each grade level is exposed to a different kind of robot.
The coding course is wrapping up at Manor Oaks and Hillside Grade School and will soon rotate to Garden City Park and New Hyde Park Road schools. Manor Oaks and Hillside Grade schools’ students will spend the rest of the year participating in Project Lead the Way, another STEM initiative implemented by the district this fall.
