Alignment of the activities to the Learning Outcomes In this activity, learners availed themselves of the programmable floor robot Blue-Bot in conjunction with the Tactile Reader and the Busy Street mat. These resources are age-appropriate and offer learners the possibility to engage in group work to solve the challenges put forward during the activity. This activity fostered digital citizenship competences given that from a young age learners were asked to collaborate to solve the given challenge. Computational Thinking Learning Outcomes:

I am able to predict and explain the outcomes of a sequence of instructions.
I am able to combine a sequence of instructions to follow a pattern.
I am able to create and modify a sequence of instructions which give a solution to a given task.

Details of the activity The resources used, the Blue-Bot, the Tactile Reader and the Busy Street mat are all ideal to foster computational thinking skills and introduce learners to the basic coding construct through fun and engaging way. By including the Busy Street mat in conjunction with the Blue-Bot, learners were asked to unleash their creativity by thinking and narrate a story about the Blue Bot journey for the day. Given the current age group, the Blue-Bot commands were used to make the robot follow the instructions given by learners. The use of the Tactile Reader will help learners make the shift to abstract thinking and view the code as a whole sequence. Description of the activity Learners were divided in groups and parallel activities were held. During the initial stage of the activity, learners were asked to observe, describe and comment on the Busy Street mat they used during the activity. The activity developed sequencing skills as children predicted and explained instruction outcomes, strengthened pattern recognition through programmed movement routes and fostered computational thinking by planning and combining instruction sequences to reach goals. Learners also developed problem-solving skills by modifying instructions when outcomes differed from expectations, enhanced spatial awareness through direction and distance exploration and improved collaboration and communication by discussing and testing solutions together. Additionally, the activity encouraged creativity and initiative in designing new routes or challenges, supported fine motor and tactile engagement through hands-on materials and promoted perseverance and self-regulation as learners refined and debugged their instruction sequences. The use of the Tactile Reader facilitated group work since learners could share the mobile Tactile Reader tiles among them and facilitate the coding aspect of the activity. Skills and competences During this activity, learners fostered their coding and computational thinking skills by going through a number of challenges. To move the Blue-Bot from one place to another on the Busy Street mat, learners went through a sequence of commands by first understanding the task ahead, by predicting the route the Blue-Bot had to take by placing a replicate of each command (forward, backward, left and right) on the mat to debug their programme. Once the debugging process was over, learners inputted the commands in the mobile Tactile Reader. This approach ensured learners made small steps from concrete to abstract thinking. To solve the given challenges, learners had to collaborate to plan the route the Blue-Bot and enter the commands on the Tactile Reader to help the Blue-Bot move from one place to another on the Busy Street mat.

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