BeeBots

My Journey

Firstly, we played around with the BeeBot to get a feel for how it works

It manœuvres by using the buttons on top of it

Directions of use

Forwards

Right turn

Pause

Left turn

Backwards

Clear

We placed our BeeBot on a map and programmed it to travel along the road

This is very helpful to show students a sense of direction

To further discover the capabilities of our BeeBots, we placed it on a letter square

We showed what letter we were on by programming it to do a 360 degree turn when on that letter

We programmed it to spell the word APPLE

We also had to assist the BeeBot to make sure it stayed on track!

My Reflection

I believe BeeBots are fantastic tools to use in the classroom. They are engaging, fun and offer something different to books and copies.

BeeBots would be ideal for literacy and maths education. They can help children to spell various different words on a letter map and to move from number to number on the 100 square for example

Bruner's Constructivist theory

There are 3 stages in this theory

1. Enactive representation
Action

3. Symbolic representation
Language number & logic

2. Iconic representation
Sensory & visual

Notation cards can be extremely helpful when plotting a BeeBot journey

They give visual representation on where the BeeBot is programmed to go

They can also be used to re track a journey in case children forget

It can be a bit much for children's developing brains to remember all the steps so that's why we use notation cards!

Using Notation cards

Progressing on further Symbolic representation

After children develop their knowledge with notation cards, the journey can be shown using symbols

It is linked with maths using letters and numbers to express the route

The letters represent the action and the number represents the amount of times this action occurs

We can change the directional words into letters
Example: F=Forward, B=Backward, L=Left, R=Right

Possible graphic notation routes:
F4, L1, F1, R1, F2, R2, B2

Move forward 4 times, move left once, move forward once , right once, forward twice, right twice, back twice

Both journeys can be mapped out using notation cards and math notation