Kindergartners Learn the Basics of Coding 

In late February, Project Math teacher Jacquie Berting stopped by Becky Swain’s kindergarten class to teach her students about coding robots. 

Berting brought her LEGO ferris wheel and the LEGO Education SPIKE app to use for the lesson. One by one, she called students up to drag and drop sections of code in the app. Berting asked students to consider how fast they want the ferris wheel to turn, how many times, in what direction, and other kinds of analytical questions to get the students thinking about how a ferris wheel works. 

The ferris wheel coding lesson is a part of Swain’s project-based robot study. 

Swain said after observing many robot drawings and robot builds in the block center as well as lots of robot talk, she decided to take the class’s interest and run with it. 

“The project launched with a large robot built out of the big blocks showing up after we returned from the library,” Swain said. “Robo 2026 had a note that introduced the new study and challenged us as a class to learn about all the ways robots help people. We are about four to five weeks into the study and so far have been exploring questions like … What is a robot?  What are some of the different kinds of robots? How do robots work — this was the guiding question for Ms. Berting’s lesson.”

The robot study will continue throughout the year. Swain shared she hopes in the end her students are able to have a better understanding of how robots help people.