In this lesson, students are tasked with completing a full body surgery that will be navigated by the Ozobot 600. Students work together to solve order of operations problems and acquire color codes to code the highly intelligent robot through the surgery. After completing Operation Ozobot, students reflect on their experience via Flipgrid by explaining the procedure for solving one of the order of operations problems as well as potential complications or errors that could have been made by a less experienced doctor. An Ozobot is a small robot that can be coded two ways: online with OzoBlockly and screen-free with color codes. My colleague, Sharon Eckert created an awesome activity to review order of operations for 6th grade math students. Students answer math questions in order to reveal color codes for the Ozobot to successfully navigate the track, which in this case is a human body in need of surgery.
When Ms. Baker approached me to brainstorm ideas of how to make this an activity that our virtual students could participate in as well, I immediately called on Kayla Hicks after seeing activities she'd created for her elementary students. In this year's #DitchSummit, one of the things that stood out from the session with Esther Park is assigning students a responsibility within group work by using color coding. This activity presented the perfect opportunity since we normally would split the work amongst a group for the physical Ozobot activity. So, I cannot take all of the credit for this lesson. It is a product of teamwork from a lot of amazing and generous educators! You can grab a copy here!
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Ms. Cain & Ms. Trinh saw the Ozobots in action and were immediately intrigued and asking for a way to use them in 7th grade math. When my colleague Sharon Eckert shared an activity to practice measurements for surface area and volume, I was excited to pass the activity to along to them. Ms. Cain & Ms. Trinh made a few edits appropriate for the ability levels of their students and we were ready to go. Then, this happened...
The internet was down district-wide. We only needed internet to access the problems students would be working out, and of course, none of us printed even one paper copy. But, we had a teacher answer key, with the problems. We got right to work, cutting and pasting to make a class set of the problems.
Needless to say, the lesson was a success. Even when the internet was back, we still opted to use our paper copies.
Ms. Cain & Ms. Trinh were calm under pressure. They learned how to use the Ozobots and were leading their classes in the activity with minimal help from me. They made adjustments throughout the day, as any good teacher does. These two are rockstars and I'm so glad to have the opportunity to work with them.
When fellow Digital Learning Coach, Korey McEwin, posted this tweet, I was immediately intrigued by the possibilities of using Ozobots in the classroom. I retweeted it and got a response from my Algebra teacher almost immediately about her interest in the activity for an upcoming unit of study. An Ozobot is is a small robot that can be coded two ways: online with OzoBlockly and screen-free with color codes. My colleague, Trista, and I teamed up to create the platform for students to answer math questions in order to reveal color codes for the Ozobot to successfully navigate the track. We settled on a Google Site with an embedded Google Drawing with spots along a Candyland game board to link to various Google Forms. Each Google Form had 1-3 math questions with response validation requiring the correct answer before revealing the color code. Students were teamed up in groups of 2-4. They were provided with a paper review prior to the activity. The Ozobots Race served as a way to check their answers. If this had been their first exposure to the review, I would have used fewer questions for our 45-minute class periods. The kids did an amazing job and learned some computer coding in the process. Incorrect answers sparked great communication around the Algebra topics and the Ozobot race proved to be an awesome incentive for completing the review. I overheard students saying: "This is the best math review!" "I just coded a robot!" "Thank you, Ms. Howard! That was so cool!" Those all sound like success to me! This is about to sound like I'm making a speech at an awards show, but this project would not have been possible without Korey McEwin, Megan Bruce, Trista Hennebry, Suzy Scott, and Kim Taber. Thank you for sharing your knowledge, resources, and talents! I am so truly grateful for educators who share and in the spirit of sharing, here are my resources for this activity.
Have you used Ozobots or any other Makerspace-type technology in the classroom? I'd love to know all about it. I'm on a mission to use our LittleBits, MakeyMakey, and StickBots in upcoming lessons. |
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