For student year
Helps students to
- express ideas
- make suggestions
Helps teachers to
- scaffold communication
Summary
As a personal and social capability, taking responsibility for your own actions is critical for successful interpersonal relationships. Two robotics challenges provide opportunities for students to develop leadership skills by planning and carrying out a project, and being able to teach their robotics challenge to other members of the school community:
- Create Your Own Challenge (3-4 sessions)
- Robot Creation Challenge (2+ sessions)
Optional extensions involve students challenging another team or teaching their parents how to complete their challenge.
Outcomes in the Australian Curriculum general capabilities include:
- take responsibility for their own actions
- take on leadership role when situation arises
- organise activities for common good of the team
- practice planning school community projects
Preparing to teach
Documents needed for the session
Session checklist
Session schedule
Rules poster
Social Management Continuum extract: develop leadership skills
Robotics Social Club: student reflection sheet - leadership
Robot design process
Teacher monitoring: develop leadership skills
Weekly teacher reflection
In the classroom
While most robotics challenges take 1-2 sessions of approx. 45 minutes each these leadership challenges can take 2-4 sessions to complete.
The following schedule and learning process supports student learning and will remain constant across all Robotics Social Club sessions. However, the content will change depending on each robotics challenge and matching the Personal and Social Capability teamwork skill that is the focus of each practice.
You can download a copy of this Robotics Social Club session plan and other documents needed for these challenges from the A. Plan section above.
Step 1. Introduction (5 minutes)
1. Introduce visual schedule of the session, e.g.
- Introduction
- Planning
- Robotics Challenge
- Halfway Monitoring
- Evaluation & Pack Up
2. Briefly outline or review the Club rules (refer to poster).
3. If necessary, teachers facilitate formation of new teams and record new team and robot names.
4. Play the short Robotics Challenge video clip on projector.
Step 2. Planning (10 – 15 minutes)
What does it look like? How can I achieve this?
- Briefly introduce the specific teamwork skill, learning intention and success criteria (refer to Student Reflection Sheet and/or Monitoring Chart).
- Teachers demonstrate/model the skill (e.g. through role play, or giving examples of language. You may choose to demonstrate meeting OR not meeting the success criteria).
- Students evaluate the teacher(s) against the success criteria.
- Students generate their own demonstration/examples of how to meet the success criteria (e.g. through a “think, pair, share” activity; use discretion as to whether students are ready to demonstrate in front of the group, this is not necessary).
- Depending on the Robotics Challenge, you may choose to prompt students to use the Robot Design Process to plan their Robotics Challenge before beginning working time (add 5 minutes to Planning time).
Step 3. Robotics Challenge & Monitoring (45 – 55 minutes)
Pause for student monitoring halfway through working time:
What am I doing well? What do I need to keep working on?
- Teach programming content if necessary, referring to programming video as needed.
- Working time: students complete the Robotics Challenge in their teams, and teachers implement effective strategies to support students’ learning of the teamwork skill (e.g. growth mindset, prompting; praise and positive reinforcement; refer to Teacher Reflection as a reminder).
- Monitoring by teachers: Team or Whole-Club Monitoring Chart/positive reinforcement system for successful demonstration of success criteria, throughout working time.
- Monitoring by students: pause halfway through the Robotics Challenge working time, for students to complete the success criteria rubric and identify what they are doing well and what they can improve on.
- If parents have been invited, they may be present for approximately last 30 minutes of session (last 20 minutes of Robotics Challenge time).
Step 4. Evaluation & Pack Up (15 minutes)
What did I do well? What do I need to keep working on next time?
- Evaluation by students: at end of the session, students once again complete the success criteria rubric, reflect on what they did well and what they can improve on next time. Support students to self-reflect on their demonstration of teamwork skills.
- Evaluation by teachers: refer to Team or Whole-Club Monitoring Chart/positive reinforcement system and praise/provide feedback to specific teams and students. Invite students to give positive/constructive feedback to peers.
- Pack up, farewell and advise students of Robotics Challenge for following session, providing them with “something to think about” to help prepare for following session if helpful.
Practice toolkit
Practice implementation planner template
We know it's not always easy to keep track of what's working and what isn't. So, we've created this template for you to record and reflect on what you're doing to create more inclusive classrooms. The implementation planner contains:
- guidance around goal setting
- a reflection section (what worked, didn’t work, what to change, and next steps)
- prompting questions.
Implementation planner with examples
Set your professional learning goal for:
Leadership skills: Robotics social clubs
Benefits of goal setting
Setting, working towards, and reflecting on goals helps you grow professionally and improve your practice. You can access AITSL learning resources for teachers to learn more about:How to set goals
The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership recommends using the SMART matrix to frame your goal setting.SMART goals refers to goals that are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time-phased
Resources
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