Three little pigs

1. Students read or listen to the story the Three little pigs and participate in a classroom discussion to consider plot development.
2. Support students to become familiar with the significant events within the story, such as beginning (orientation), problem (complication) and solution (resolution).
3. Students draw pictures of the main events that can be used to retell the story. Alternatively provide the images supplied.
4. Students create their own story map and use a series of arrows and visual instructions to retell the story of Goldilocks and the three bears. Use the resource sheet provided here.
5. Introduce a robotic device that uses a light sensor to follow commands. In this example we are using Ozobot. Allow time for students to explore the Ozocodes. With younger learners you may want to organise Year 6 buddies to support with this part of the lesson.
6. Depending on your learners, you could do one of the following:
   • Provide students with a large sheet of paper to create their program using the Ozocode stickers available for purchase. Use their own images or the images supplied to sequence the story and create instructions for Ozobot to follow.
   • Ask students to create their own colour codes using chisel-tipped felt markers. This will require more testing and debugging to see what the colour combinations do.
7. Map out the story first on a smaller piece of paper and test to see if their instructions (commands made up of a series of colours) work. Once they have debugged their colour coded program, students retell the story as Ozobot moves from scene to scene. The programmed robot’s route and the retelling can be recorded.
8. Share the different ways that students have programed their robot to help retell the story.

Literacy focus

• If we put the events in the wrong order, what happens? (The story would not make sense.)
• Why do we leave out things that are not important ('irrelevant details') when we retell a story? (They distract us from the main story.)
• What words can we find that are used to link events? (Examples: then, after, soon, later.)

Digital Technology focus

• When making the map, how can you write your code using the shortest number of steps?
• How can you make a robot do what you want?
• How does Ozobot know what to do?

Abstraction

One of the key concepts within the Digital Technologies curriculum is Abstraction. Abstraction involves hiding details of an idea, problem or solution that are not relevant, to focus on a manageable number of aspects. Abstraction is a natural part of communication: people rarely communicate every detail, because many details are not relevant in a given context.

The idea of abstraction can be acquired from an early age. For example, when students are asked how to make toast for breakfast, they do not mention all of the steps explicitly if they assume that the listener is an intelligent implementer of the abstract instructions.

Central to managing the complexity of information systems is the ability to ‘temporarily ignore’ the internal details of the subcomponents of larger specifications, algorithms, systems or interactions. In digital systems, everything must be broken down into simple instructions.

Programming a robot

A robot needs instructions or commands to know what to do. Ozobot robots have a visual sensor which it uses to gather information about its surroundings. It can follow visual commands which are made up of a series of colors.

Students can create or select visual commands to instruct the robot to complete a task.

This printable reference chart contains some of the color sequences that constitute the building blocks of Ozobot’s language.

Tips on how to use Ozobot

Sticker codes for purchase.

'Make a Map' activity sheet