Month: January 2018

At the end of last year LEGO Education got in touch with Penpol to see how we were getting on with our WeDo 2.0 robotics sets. After a lengthy discussion on the phone the LEGO team were incredibly impressed with how well the staff and pupils at Penpol were embracing and learning through their kits.  They asked if they might be able to use the school as a Case Study for a future article and we thought no more of it.  Until, that is, we spotted this article in the January 2018 issue of Education Today.

This magazine is sent out to every school in the country and often features a ‘View From The Classroom‘ section.  I’m delighted to say that this months feature is all about Penpol School and our use of the LEGO Robots!  Alongside an interview with myself there are some photos of Will, Alfie, Lily and Freya are featured showing off their creations!

You can read the whole article here: (Click on the article to make it bigger!)

Click article to view it full size

As well as being featured in the magazine, LEGO Education were kind enough to give our four magazine-stars their own ‘Mini Milo’ LEGO pack!  Here’s a photo of the four enjoying their new found fame and free LEGO!

And what exactly does a ‘Mini Milo’ set look like?  I’m glad you asked as they really are quite cute!

Class 3 have recently started getting to grips with our Lego WeDo 2.0 robotics sets and this week took their skills to a whole new level by building and coding Milo, the explorer robot.  To build this cute little robot the children had to follow a series of building instructions on their iPads, ensuring they worked in a team to locate the pieces required and to build the robot correctly.  Having displayed a great amount of teamwork and excitement, the children then wrote a short program to make their model come to life. By dragging and dropping blocks of code, the children wrote a set of instructions to move the robot forwards and backwards.  Some groups even found a way to have Milo make noises as he moved around.

“I really liked racing the robots, our one didn’t move very much but it was really fun.  The band wasn’t on right on my robot but we fixed it and it worked in the end” – Ada, Amelia, Amelia

“I liked it when our robot was in the race.  I liked it when it made code so it sounded like it was talking .  I liked it when we started building the robot because we had really good teamwork” – Alex, Louis, Ethan M

When each group had built and programmed their model we all went outside to have a quick race.  With plenty of cheering and excitement, all of the Milo robots went head-to-head to see which was the fastest.  This thrilling race has been immortalised on film for everyone to relive and enjoy!

This week in Computing Year 5 and Year 6 have been learning all about the different parts that make up a computer, including the Motherboard, Processor, Hard Drive, RAM, Graphics Card, Heatsink and the Power Supply Unit.  We learnt how all of these parts are useless by themselves, but when they are all connected up together they can make a fully working computer.

“It was really fun, learning how the motherboard had all these bits where you can plug everything in.  It was really interesting because I was surprised how heavy it was compared to how big it was.” – Alex, Year 6

As well as having a chance to investigate these components, the children were also given the opportunity to hold and draw the objects in order to get a greater understanding of them.

“It was great, because we got to know what was inside a computer.” – Holly, Year 6

Next week each of the groups will have the opportunity to assemble these components with Paul to hopefully build their own working computers.  It’ll be a very exciting project for sure, so check back for more photos on the Penpol Times soon!

“It was quite good because we know how it works now.  I just thought that a computer was one little piece inside a screen but actually it’s a whole network of really weird pieces.” – Eva, Year 6