Riverhill’s Robotics class is taught in Pre K3 through Sixth Grade. Pre K3 through second grade students spend time each week focusing on various projects while third grade through sixth grade students work as teams each week. Working together as a team is a wonderful learning experience for the students; in fact, teamwork is an important social skill that lends itself perfectly to the projects included in Robotics and Engineering. Thus far, Riverhill students have programmed S2 robots to draw circles, squares, and the letter “L”. The S2 robot projects include a programming component where students learn to drag tiles into a grid which in turn tells the robot what behaviors to perform. The students are also learning about simple machines through Lego Education Kits; they have built a tower crane, a race car, dancing ducks, and hungry alligators using gears, pulleys, wheels, and axles. The sixth grade students are working on a long-term project: building and programming a VEX IQ robot. The build alone took seven weeks; now the students are ready to install EasyC software and program the robots. The plan is to continue expanding the Robotics/Engineering activities offered at Riverhill through private and grant funding. We look forward to being a model elementary school for Robotics and Engineering in the Florence area and are presently working toward STEAM Accreditation through Cognia.
