For the past few years our fourth grade teacher, Mr. Dobos,
has had his students participate in The Hour of Code. This
nationally-recognized movement helps to teach students the
background coding that goes into creating video games and
other advanced technologies. In an effort to give our students
some additional background knowledge in the earlier grades,
we purchased a number of new resources for the 2016-2017
school year. In kindergarten, they will get to use Bee Bots.
These robotic bees have buttons on the top of them. The
students will learn how to program the bee to move along
trails and through mazes by pushing directional buttons. First
grade will use the board game Robot Turtles. In Robot Turtles,
the students have to use paper directional cards to plan a
course for their turtle to move through different adventures.
Puzzlets, which will be used in second grade, takes this to
the next level using an iPad app and a cloud-shaped game
board. Students place directional tiles on the game board
and they watch their character on the screen react to their
commands. Third grade will use the free app, Scratch Jr.,
on the iPads. This app puts everything together and allows
the students to create their own characters and stories and
manipulate their movements using directional codes. We
also purchased OSMO kits for the iPads which comes with a
variety of hands-on activities incorporating Math, Spelling,
Logic, and Art. There is also a coding kit for OSMO that
students can use in any grade level. And we couldn’t leave Mr.
Dobos’s Science classes out. For their electrical circuit unit, we
purchased additional kits that the students are going to love.
Students will get the opportunity to build circuits in more
ways than ever before with the addition of “Squishy Circuits”,
“Snap Circuits”, “Draw Circuits”, and “Sticker Circuits”. We really
look forward to all of the amazing new technology that our
students will get to experiment with this year as
we prepare them for the future.
West Jefferson Hills | Fall 2016 | icmags.com 51
W E ST J E FFE RSON HI L L S SC HOOL DI ST RIC T NE WS — M CCLE LLA N E LE M E N TARY S CH O OL
McClellan Elementary
West Jefferson Hills
Building Brighter Futures