Middle Schoolers Build Real-World Robots at CTE Summer Camp

Equipped with cardboard, hot glue and Micro:bits, middle school students took over a La Follette High School classroom this summer to build everything from motorized castle gates to dual-motor boats.

This is the MMSD Career and Technical Education Summer Discovery Program: Coding and Robotics, where sixth through eighth graders had the opportunity to spend four intense days transforming raw components into programmable devices.

Students learn everything from coding to how electric vehicles are built to the math required to calculate acceleration and speed. By the end of the week they’re able to use everything they learned during the week to build a unique robot of their own.

“There's a lot of interest for students learning how to code, so we intentionally chose hands-on projects for this summer program because that’s where we see the most engagement,” Sherman Middle School CTE teacher Anna Toman, who runs the Coding and Robotics Summer Discovery Program said. “The four-day summer program gives students an introduction to things that they may not be familiar with.”

Their first project tasked them to build a mini electric car that could reach five meters as fast as possible using servomotors — which are tiny motors designed for remote controlled cars or robots.

While the task seems simple enough on the surface, students quickly learned that when you blend engineering and construction, things don’t always work as well in practice as they do on paper.

“I’ve had to change the gears on my car a few times, because the gears that I had chosen at first were too small to mesh together,” James, a rising eighth grader from O’Keefe Middle School said. “So I had to go back and look at what we learned to figure out how I can build this car to go as fast as possible every time I turn it on.”

By giving students the freedom to build, fail and iterate over the summer, they’re able to build technical confidence and problem-solving skills that will carry into their academic routines when the new school year begins.

That’s especially important for students like rising sixth graders who just graduated from elementary school.

“A lot of them are just trying a CTE class for the first time,” Toman said. “So they get an introduction to robotics to see if they’re interested in pursuing this further in school or beyond.”

For rising eighth-grader Alfred, that spark of interest came when he was set free to make a robot out of cardboard and motors.

Using his own custom programming and a couple of controllers he built a miniature retractable ramp neatly housed between two towers. When you press the “B” button the ramp would lower and then raise back up once you press “A.”

“I just really like physical engineering that actually has uses in real life,” Alfred said while still tinkering with his ramp. “I thought of the idea to make a ramp, decided to roll with it and I’m really happy with how this works now.”

His project is exactly what makes the four-day camp so exciting — students can walk in with little to no experience and leave with a robot they can call their own.

“My favorite part of the class is seeing the kids' faces when something clicks for them, especially when they get excited coming up with new ideas,” Toman said. “If you like to work with your hands and create new things, this is the perfect summer program for you.”