Students working with robots

Leadership skills: Robotics social clubs

teaching practice
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For student year

Middle years

Helps students to

  • express ideas
  • make suggestions
  • Helps teachers to

  • scaffold communication
  • Summary

    As a personal and social capability, taking responsibility for your own actions is critical for successful interpersonal relationships. Two robotics challenges provide opportunities for students to develop leadership skills by planning and carrying out a project, and being able to teach their robotics challenge to other members of the school community:

    1. Create Your Own Challenge (3-4 sessions)
    2. Robot Creation Challenge (2+ sessions)

    Optional extensions involve students challenging another team or teaching their parents how to complete their challenge.

    Outcomes in the Australian Curriculum general capabilities include:

    • take responsibility for their own actions
    • take on leadership role when situation arises
    • organise activities for common good of the team
    • practice planning school community projects

    Preparing to teach

    Documents needed for the session

    Session checklist

    This checklist helps each session run smoothly. Technical issues are not uncommon, so it is helpful to go through this checklist at least a day or two before each robotics social club session to allow time for troubleshooting and preparing resources.

    Session schedule

    This standard schedule and learning process describes each robotics social club session to best support students’ learning. While the content will change depending on the robotics challenge and matching Personal and Social Capability teamwork skill, this schedule and learning process will remain constant.

    Robotics Social Club: rules

    Rules poster

    Ideally, print and display this rules poster in the room each week, and remind students of them regularly. These rules can be referred to when rewarding students’ positive behaviour.

    Social Management Continuum extract: develop leadership skills

    Reflect on the students with ASD in your club, and use this continuum to “plot” their current skill level in each of the five Social Management areas. If you are not familiar with these students, you may like to consult with their case manager and/or class teachers to help identify their areas of strength and need.

    Robotics Social Club: student reflection sheet - leadership

    Use the social management continuum to identify individual student needs within the personal and social capabilities of the Australian curriculum.

    Student Reflection Sheet: leadership

    Student reflection sheet: develop leadership skills

    Robotics Social Club: robotics design process

    Robot design process

    Use this visual to support students as they move through the robot design process: Ask, plan, create, evaluate, improve.

    Teacher monitoring: develop leadership skills

    Use these monitoring charts during the session to show students and teams how they are going. Draw students' attention to this as you record their successes.

    Weekly teacher reflection

    After each robotics social club session, complete this checklist of effective strategies to quickly reflect on:

    • what is working well that you should continue
    • what is not working for your club 
    • what you might change for next time 
    • any new ideas that you might like to start trying next time.

    Feel free to add your own ideas and strategies.

    In the classroom

    While most robotics challenges take 1-2 sessions of approx. 45 minutes each these leadership challenges can take 2-4 sessions to complete.

    The following schedule and learning process supports student learning and will remain constant across all Robotics Social Club sessions. However, the content will change depending on each robotics challenge and matching the Personal and Social Capability teamwork skill that is the focus of each practice. 

    You can download a copy of this Robotics Social Club  session plan and other documents needed for these challenges from the A. Plan section above. 

    Step 1. Introduction (5 minutes)

    1.    Introduce visual schedule of the session, e.g. 

    • Introduction
    • Planning 
    • Robotics Challenge 
    • Halfway Monitoring
    • Evaluation & Pack Up

    2.    Briefly outline or review the Club rules (refer to poster).

    3.    If necessary, teachers facilitate formation of new teams and record new team and robot names. 

    4.    Play the short Robotics Challenge video clip on projector.

    Step 2. Planning (10 – 15 minutes)

    What does it look like? How can I achieve this?

    1. Briefly introduce the specific teamwork skill, learning intention and success criteria (refer to Student Reflection Sheet and/or Monitoring Chart).
    2. Teachers demonstrate/model the skill (e.g. through role play, or giving examples of language. You may choose to demonstrate meeting OR not meeting the success criteria).
    3. Students evaluate the teacher(s) against the success criteria.
    4. Students generate their own demonstration/examples of how to meet the success criteria (e.g. through a “think, pair, share” activity; use discretion as to whether students are ready to demonstrate in front of the group, this is not necessary).
    5. Depending on the Robotics Challenge, you may choose to prompt students to use the Robot Design Process to plan their Robotics Challenge before beginning working time (add 5 minutes to Planning time).

    Step 3. Robotics Challenge & Monitoring (45 – 55 minutes)

    Pause for student monitoring halfway through working time:

    What am I doing well? What do I need to keep working on?

    1. Teach programming content if necessary, referring to programming video as needed.
    2. Working time: students complete the Robotics Challenge in their teams, and teachers implement effective strategies to support students’ learning of the teamwork skill (e.g. growth mindset, prompting; praise and positive reinforcement; refer to Teacher Reflection as a reminder).
    3. Monitoring by teachers: Team or Whole-Club Monitoring Chart/positive reinforcement system for successful demonstration of success criteria, throughout working time.
    4. Monitoring by students: pause halfway through the Robotics Challenge working time, for students to complete the success criteria rubric and identify what they are doing well and what they can improve on.
    5. If parents have been invited, they may be present for approximately last 30 minutes of session (last 20 minutes of Robotics Challenge time).

    Step 4. Evaluation & Pack Up (15 minutes)

    What did I do well? What do I need to keep working on next time?

    1. Evaluation by students: at end of the session, students once again complete the success criteria rubric, reflect on what they did well and what they can improve on next time. Support students to self-reflect on their demonstration of teamwork skills.
    2. Evaluation by teachers: refer to Team or Whole-Club Monitoring Chart/positive reinforcement system and praise/provide feedback to specific teams and students. Invite students to give positive/constructive feedback to peers.
    3. Pack up, farewell and advise students of Robotics Challenge for following session, providing them with “something to think about” to help prepare for following session if helpful.

    Practice toolkit

    Practice implementation planner template

    We know that it is not always easy to keep track of what is working and what is not. So, we have created this template for you to record and reflect on what you are doing to help you create a more inclusive classroom. The implementation planner contains:

    • Guidance around goal setting
    • Reflection section (What worked, didn’t work and what to change and next steps.)
    • Prompting questions

    Implementation planner template

    Implementation planner with examples

    Set your professional learning goal for:

    Leadership skills: Robotics social clubs
    You can set and save your goal for inclusive practices using inclusionED. Saved goals will appear in your profile. Here you can access, refine and review your goal easily.

    Benefits of goal setting

    Setting, working towards, and reflecting on goals helps you grow professionally and improve your practice. You can access AITSL learning resources for teachers to learn more about:
    How to set goals
    The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership recommends using the SMART matrix to frame your goal setting.

    SMART goals refers to goals that are:
    • Specific
    • Measurable
    • Achievable
    • Relevant
    • Time-phased
    Read more about Improving teaching practices.

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