Pre-Lesson Preparation
This lesson will involve learners coding Marty to identify different categories of waste and non-waste materials and react to them differently to inform learners of their location and / or quantity. There are suggested code examples in the two attached code resource files, which describe potential solutions.
This could be a long 90-minute session or two shorter 45-minuts sessions to allow for the required code planning and testing.
Warm-Up
Share with learners the objectives and success criteria from slide 3 of the presentation.
Ask learners what effect they think air pollution has on them, in their current environment. Share with learners that we will carry out a simulation focusing on the effect pollution has on our lungs and the lungs' ability to share oxygen with the body.
Click to expand for the procedure for the game
Preparation:
Mark an area, about 3m x 3m with cones or chalk. Have a stopwatch, either from a phone or a physical stopwatch.
Divide the class into two groups. One group will be oxygen and the other group will be particles of pollution suspended in the air. From the pollution group, have between 6 and 8 learners make a circle to symbolize the rest of the body.
- Explain to learners that the lungs take in oxygen from the environment and deliver it to the body.
- Tell learners that you are going to time how long it takes for all the oxygen to pass through the lungs, be delivered to the body and exit the body through the lungs as carbon dioxide.
- Start the stopwatch
- Model this by telling learners you are an oxygen atom.
- Pass through the square representing the lungs.
Weave in and out of the learners representing the human body.
- Pass through the lungs again.
- Stop the stopwatch.
- Start the timer.
- Have the learners who are the oxygen atoms run through the lungs area one at a time, making a chain of oxygen atoms, but not linked in any way.
- Have the chain of oxygen atoms weave in and out of the 'body' circle.
- Have learners pass through the lungs again.
- Stop the stopwatch.
- Repeat the process but this time, oxygen atoms pair with available pollution particles; not every oxygen atom will have a pollution particle.
- This time, when oxygen passes through the lungs, their partner pollution particle remains in the lungs becoming an obstacle to the learners that follow.
- Stop the stopwatch after all learners have passed through the now polluted lungs.
- Swap groups for oxygen and pollution particles / human body.
Compare results between the time it takes for breathing with and without pollution in the lungs. Consider that a person needs so much oxygen to efficiently carry out daily tasks. What would a person need to do to deliver the same amount of oxygen with the pollutants as without any pollutants?
It would take a lot more energy to pull in the oxygen at a greater rate to offset the effect of the pollution particles; you would be much more tired breathing if you had pollution in your lungs.
Get Learning
Revise past learning about a variety of pollutants for air, land, and water. Have learners work in small groups and recall the effect of different examples of pollution affecting the environment, in their workbooks.
Share with learners slides 3 and 4 from the presentation to showcase automated solutions for supporting the environment. The notes from the presentation should be used to guide the discussion. Learners should use their workbooks to record any insights from the discussion.
Time for Practice
Following the discussion, learners need to choose a challenge from slide 5. The description for each challenge tells learners the goal of their work and the requirements to achieve success. These challenges should be completed in groups. On slide 6, learners will see the blocks that must be included in their technology work along with a description of what each block does.
Learners should be given sufficient time for planning their solution to the challenge of automating one of the two tasks on slide 5. It would be helpful to learners to have this slide displayed through their design and testing work or print out the challenge resource page to make it available to groups.
Learners will work in their groups to discuss the most efficient ways to code Marty to react to the environment and carry out the assigned job without human interference once the code starts. Take time to move around the classroom asking questions about the sequence they have chosen and the calculations they have made, prior to testing.
Cool Down
Bring learners back together to discuss if they found anything interesting about automation and environmental solutions.
Suggested questions you might ask:
- Are there benefits to having machines, or specifically robots, take the place of humans for some of the tasks of environmental support?
- Are there challenges to having an automated solution to environmental problems?
- How do the benefits compare to the challenges of automated solutions? (give learners time to consider and discuss this question, it may lead to future learning, research opportunities or motivation to improve on their developed code.
Ask for feedback on their group coding experiences:
- Was there anything new you learned while taking part in these challenges?
- Is there anything you will remember for future challenges?
- Was there anything you learned previously that was essential for completing today's challenges?
Log off and collect all devices.
Carry out any end of lesson routines.
