Warm up

Read to learners the learning objectives and success criteria using whichever method is familiar. They are on the ppt slides but the presentation does not need to be shown if you don't want it to be.

Warm up with a game of musical statues or musical bumps (there are links on the game names if you do not know how to play them). Here is a link to an audio track on YouTube that has a child-friendly music track. Decide how long you want to play, the track is about 12 minutes long.

Ask learners how they knew when to start dancing. When the music started. Ask them how they knew to stop dancing. When the music stopped. Tell learners that these were instructions that were given to them and they followed the instructions. You didn't tell them to start dancing each time the music started and you didn't tell them to stop each time the music stopped. You could say that we followed the commands of the game. Now we are going to learn about something that needs our commands to get moving.

Get Learning

Read the story from the presentation. Much of the knowledge and understanding part of the learning for the lesson will occur as you read the story. Encourage learners to ask questions during the story, or pause during the story if you see thoughtful faces to further explore what is happening.

The following videos feature in the presentation, showing Marty the Robot in action:

Marty dancing upon being set down.

video of Marty walking when light changes

video of Marty stopping when lifted

video of Marty walking after the green card

video of Marty dancing and stopping with the red card

Time for Practice

Learners will take turns being the person in control or being a robot. Let learners know that they will need to instruct their partner to reach a destination by using the color cards. Perhaps saying, "We need to be sure that we don't get in the way when our partners start moving and do our best to just use the colors to tell our partner where to go. Our partners are pretending to be robots and robots are given instructions before they start moving. It isn't wise to get in a robot's way when they start following instructions. At the end, we can celebrate together, when our partners reach the goal."

Have learners choose their starting point and place down a green color card or colored sheet of paper where they decide it should be. Have them then place the red card at the goal for where they want their partner to walk. Have learners line up their partner so that they are facing the red card, from the direction of the green card; the 'robots' need to walk in a straight line, they can't decide to walk in different directions because they were not instructed to. Once they are happy with the way their partner is facing, have them, 'command' their partner to start walking. It may be that Marty will not reach the red card on the first attempt; because people sometimes need to practice a bit at being a robot. It is important that learners see there are occasions where trial and error is a necessity with robots and creating instructions.

If you want to see how to use this way of commanding a real Marty the Robot, please feel free to visit our website's knowledge base for details on how Marty Unplugged works. Additionally, there is a lesson that mirrors this one, that makes use of the real Marty, here.

Once learners all manage to reach the goal, celebrate with them. "You just created a program to tell Marty to do something. You are at the very start of a journey to create instructions for computers and robots!!"

Cool Down

Remind learners of the amazing work that they accomplished, "You were able to instruct a robot to move from a starting point to a finishing point! That is just amazing! I wonder what other learning we will get to take part in."

Remind learners of the goals for the lesson, "Use colors to tell others where to move," and, "to get a partner to walk forward and stop."

Ask learners if they think they did well with the lesson using a familiar formative assessment strategy: thumbs up for good, thumbs to the side for OK, thumbs down for not so good; a green, yellow or red card, indicating their thoughts; a one to one chat about the learning; whole class feedback using a PMI (plus, minus, interesting) approach; or some other strategy with which the learners are familiar.

Carry out any end of lesson routines.

Clear everything away.