As part of Scheck Hillel Community School’s emphasis on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), today, December 11, Grade 5 participated in a Day of Code with an offline activity that served as an introduction to computer programming. Scheck Hillel's Day of Code is an extension of the international 'Hour of Code' initiative, a global movement reaching millions of students in 180+ countries between December 8-14.
Students collaborated in small groups with each member taking a turn to act as the "robot". The robot waited outside the classroom while the group was busy writing instructions, which detailed directions for their robot classmate to build a specific cup sculpture. The catch: students were only able to use code language of arrows, shapes and numbers to create the directions - as if you were programming code for a real robot! When the human robots returned to the room, they had three chances to create the cup sculpture using the code written for them by their respective group. After the third attempt, the sculptures were judged based on how similar they were to structure the group intended.
Through this activity, students learned new communication skills, how to write coded messages and had fun in the process. A special thanks to Nancy Penchev, Juda and Maria Diener Lower School Media Specialist, for creating this opportunity for our rising engineers, which complements other STEM opportunities offered to students on campus, such as STEAM Club for Girls and the CIJE STEM track in our Ben Lipson Upper School.
