The power of the humble Beebot

The Beebot has stood the test of time, it was already in classrooms long before we had a Digital Technologies curriculum and it remains at the top of the list for most junior primary teachers.

Post by Lauren Stanhope, CSER Project Officer, Queensland

We love the BeeBot because of the simple instructions for teaching programming, its durability for small fingers and the hands-on aspect for the inquisitive young minds. I love to watch my students’ eyes light up when they first get introduced to the Beebot.

Usually, we find this robot in the Foundation classrooms, however, don’t forget this Digital Technologies tool can be used in other year levels as well. On the CSER website you will find lesson plans for Foundations to Year 4 classes. These lessons range in ideas and link with other curriculum areas such as Design and Technologies. I particularly love the links with Literacy, check out the ‘Goldilocks, The Three Bears & Bee Bot’ lesson idea.

The Digital Technologies Hub also provides lesson ideas for how to incorporate the BeeBot into your F-4 classroom. Make sure you have a look at ‘Spelling Bee’ where students use an alphabet mat to spell out the letters of their spelling words, or the ‘Skip counting with BeeBots.’

Thank you to all the teachers who have contributed to CSER's online community as part of their tasks for the F-6 MOOC, in the gallery below are some fantastic ideas for incorporating BeeBots into your Digital Technologies lessons.

BeeBots are one of the kits available from our Free Lending Library.  Our BeeBot kits come with 12 BeeBots, recharging stations, a selection of maps, including literacy and numeracy focussed maps and story-based maps, giant sequence cards to explore navigational instruction sequencing, a guide to using BeeBots in the classroom, and our lesson plan exemplars for F-4. To register your interest please complete the request form on our website https://csermoocs.adelaide.edu.au/library/