Case: Sphero Struggle: Productive or Demoralizing?

Bridget is in her second year of teaching 4th grade at Maple Elementary and has just started her Masters in STEM educationSTEM education after realizing that teaching science is her passion. During her last year of college and first year as a teacher, she participated in a course and professional developmentProfessional development project to learn about computational thinking and computer scienceComputer science. These experiences, coupled with the supportive teaching staff and administrationAdministration at Maple, have convinced her to integrate robots in her classroom. She’s excited to give the kids the opportunity to develop persistence, learn about science, and practice their codingCoding while they program their robots. In this case, Bridget shares the unexpected challenge she faced when two of her students encountered difficulties with “productive struggleProductive struggle” during a robotics design lesson.