Seventh grade students build robot for PLTW

Racquel Reyes’s seventh grade technology students at Washingtonville Middle School have been working on building a robot as part of Project Lead The Way. The self-driving robots will be built by the students through expert coding and programming from students. 

Project Lead the Way is a pre-k through grade12 program where students recieve learning that connects them to real-world experiences. These experiences will then help them build the skills necessary to thrive in college, career and beyond. Students learn skills such as problem solving, critical thinking and communication. 

Ms. Reyes’s seventh grade students have been working on building, coding and programming a rescue vehicle that can drive on its own. 

For this project, students learned about the robots that were used during 9/11. During 9/11 robots were used to dig through rubble and assist their human counterparts with searching for victims and assessing structural integrity of hard to reach spaces.This way students can make a connection between the robots they are making and the ones that were used during 9/11. 

Students received kits that contain all the materials needed to build the gears from scratch to  learn about these different parts and how they affect the robot. For example, they learned about the brain processor. The brain processor is a key part of the robot because the code that students write travels through the wires that are connected to the robot. Once the robot receives that code, it will be able to drive on its own. 

The PLTW program allows the teacher to facilitate, while the students are the main leaders in their projects. 

“This is a student driven learning program,” said Ms. Reyes. “So, it’s up to them to learn a lot of these things. They are doing a lot of this on their own which is really special for them. They are building a lot of 21st century skills.”

All of the students work in teams and are assigned different roles such as engineer, project manager and analyst. This way, they can work effectively and make sure they stay on task. 

“In this project, I’ve learned a lot about motors and how to use them,” said seventh grader Anthony Marte. 

“I’ve learned a lot about coding because I am the computer science person,” said seventh grader Jacob Quinde. “So, I’m learning how to make the correct codes for our robot.”

As the students advance in their project, they will start to test their robot to see what works and what may need improvement.

“We test our robot all the time to make sure that it functions correctly,” added Drew Poust another seventh grade student in Ms. Reyes’s class. “The PLTW website has each step and what pieces we need to continue building, which is really helpful.”

A key aspect of this project, explained seventh grader Eduardo Gonazalez, is that they are all working together.

“We need a lot of team chemistry in order to work on this project,” said Eduardo. “We all need to work hard.”