Lesson with Kids: Slytherin vs Gryffindor. BB-8 Robot Competition

The new season of programming lessons has started. I wanted to make a new kind of lessons having just one BB-8 Star Wars robot and 7 kids of 8–10 years. Previously I’ve made a Pirate lesson where kids would fight for the robot programming it and a Star Wars movie lesson which I’ll write about in one of my next posts.

After brainstorming with colleagues we realized that only magic can help us. And that would be Harry Potter magic!

The story begins

Right at the entrance, kids received a ticket to Hogwarts Express hearing the words: ”After many years of battle between good and evil, victory over Lord Voldemort, and restoration of peace in the magic land, the main magicians issued a law that 7 smart kids were to be picked to spend some time in Hogwarts every semester. You’re the lucky one and get the ticket”.

When everyone appeared, the elevator took us to the last floor with a big playground and beanbag chairs. Kids had never been there, so the place surprised them.

At the entrance to the room, Professor Mcgonagall was greeting kids in her Sorting hat. She had put the hat on every child and gave the BB-8 body ball to everyone in turn to shake it. The ball determined to which house the kid would go: Slytherin or Gryffindor.

After teams were formed, Minerva Mcgonagall showed them the BB-8 robot, how it works, what it can do, and explained the rules of the competition.

Rules of the game

One team had to come up with a programming task for the other one. The second team had to implement it and give back the robot to the first team with a new task. This would take place in turns till the time is up. Every task had to be based on the previous one. So the next team had to look on the code of the previous team and either add to it or update it. The tasks were graded and the winner team would receive either the Bertie Bott’s Beans or the warms candies. There also were spells kids could apply:

• Expecto Patronum: a spell of changing a house member onto any member of another house.
• Lumos: a spell of changing the task.
• Nox: giving back the task to the other team. For sure the points for the task would go to the team which had solved it.

All the spells would control the complexity of the tasks, given to the other team, and would serve as support to every team. Kids were not left alone to solve the problems. Every house had its teacher who’d help. Professor McGonagall would also come for help when she was needed.

The competition between the houses was meant to get kids used to robot programming. We started from simple actions such as: make him run, produce sound, glow with different lights and draw shapes. Compared to Scratch, robot has physical limitations. If you want him to run and to bark, you’d have to mix this behavior in cycle by little pieces. It wasn’t clear for all the kids from the beginning.

When the competition was over, kids got their candies and sports exercises. They had to prepare for something bigger, for the Quidditch Cup!

The Quidditch Cup

Our Quidditch Cup was a bit different from a real one, as everything else. The BB-8 had to be programmed by the kids and then act as a ball in the game.

The game logic: the ball is thrown from a kid to a kid and catched. When the action has happened,the ball glows either with green and can be thrown further with no consequences, or changes its color from green to red and vibrates. That means the person has to leave the game.

Every kid participated in writing a piece of this game and all were happy to play it afterwards. When the lesson was over, some even stayed and continued playing, but removed the rule of having to leave the game if the ball got red in the hands. Kids wanted to tease their luck. Some were willing to feel how the ball shakes in their hands.

What lead to success

The magic lesson was successful because :

• Everyone knew the Harry Potter movie and remembered the plot, even helped to remember the names of the houses and the spells. This made it easy to feel oneself as part of the game.
• The tasks were interesting and kids were involved in the process. When kids didn’t know what to do because it wasn’t their turn to act, teachers took care to do something different with them: to do sport or to talk.
• When kid needed help in programming, there always was someone to help and to explain how it works.

Good luck with your lessons and with your kids!