Wylandville Elementary Continued Canon-McMillan’s Epic Build Showcases with Spring 2022 Showcase

Elementary students at Wylandville Elementary showcased what they created during the second semester at their Epic Build Showcase.These projects helped them learn skills like problem solving, creative thinking, perseverance, patience and collaboration with coding in the classroom. In Cycle One they learned about visual block programming. In Cycle Two they continued to learn the fundamentals of computer science through visual block based programming but extended their learning by combining hardware and software.  Each grade integrated coding into the curriculum in different ways. Some of those projects included:

• First Grade: In First Grade, the students learned about freshwater habitats. In these classes students constructed an aquarium with live guppy fish. Next they created a Minecraft themed habitat in Scratch and coded their guppy fish to teach facts about freshwater habitats.

• Second Grade: Second Graders built Bluetooth Lego Robots which they coded to move about. This helped students understand the connection between hardware and software. They coded the robots to travel around Pennsylvania and share facts about the state. Others coded the robots to tell realistic fiction stories about superheroes and superpowers. One class also coded robots that were representations of the Teamology characters that are part of Social-Emotional Learning that is taught building-wide in the elementary school.

• Third Grade: In Third Grade, the students created large continent maps that displayed physical features. Their robots traveled to each feature and explained details about each landmark.

• Fourth Grade: In Fourth Grade, students used the MakeCode app developed by Microsoft to get familiar with JavaScript. Using this they were able to modify the game Minecraft by using code. Here they used blocks that were very similar to the ones they used in Scratch. They also learned the difference between Java and JavaScript. 

In the video introduction, presented by a number of fourth grade students at Wylandville Elementary, they declared that they also learned a number of different soft skills, like patience and teamwork, that will help them with jobs in their future. Learning all of these coding and soft skills from the Epic Build Showcases will help them determine an awesome future because “Awesome is the New Normal!”

Click through below for some photos from Monday's Showcase!