First Day of School: No! No! Yes!

Classes on our first day of school are only 20 minutes long. A few years ago, I realized that instead of wasting this time with logistics such as name cards and what did you do this summer, I wanted to do something that I could and would refer to throughout the entire course. Something that I could refer to constantly as "What did you learn on the very first day?" For robotics, I thought that I would have the kids write pseudocode from the very first program as simple as it would be. Then I thought, "No." I should wait until the programs become more complicated and then introduce pseudocode. But then I thought that, "No!" again. I should do it from the very beginning so that it becomes engrained and automatic. "Yes!" This is what I will do. Thus, I had the students write in their journals the directions/steps for making a robot go around a stack of their journals. I put out a couple of meter sticks and the kids went right to work. It was great. The students then shared their steps out loud. Forward some inches (Next time, it will be metric.), then turn 90 degrees etc. It was great. After stacking their journals on top of each other in the middle of the table, I then demonstrated an actual program with a base robot that I had already created to complete the task. I chose not to introduce the word pseudocode until later, but simply refer to what they wrote as directions or steps. With the hook set, the next day I will have the students build the base robot, review some of the course expectations and get started on the EV3 Curriculum.