Learning to program with robots in primary school
A complete pedagogical robotics kit at the service of the teacher
Since the beginning of the 2016 school year, programming learning has been included in the school curricula of primary schools. Our robotics kits offer primary schools a fun and complete solution to teach programming to students: hardware, software and educational booklets (PDF).
The robot programming kit for school: a material adapted to children
A programmable card and its sticker
The Arduino programmable card of our robotic kits is protected by a transparent plastic shell and supplied with a coloured sticker to make it easier for students to find its ports.
Motors, wheels, LEDs and a buzzer
Two engines and four wheels make up the robotics kit to program the movements of a small car. A red LED, a blue LED and a small buzzer complete the kit to program a traffic light, for example, or to play music.
Gears, axes and cubes
Full of brightly coloured cubes to build robots, as well as gears, axes and a rack to tame the movement.
Software to program robots with icons and blocks
Programming with icons for small programmers
A quick start
To learn the logic of programming, the “icon” software is perfect! To build their program, students must drag and drop icons on a line that represents their program, then transfer it to their robot.
Icons to program
Its icons represent actions (move forward, move back…) or parts to be programmed (motor, LED…) whose parameters children can adjust once placed on the line of their program.
Program with “Scratch” blocks for larger ones
The CM1/CM2 students will be able to program their robot on a Scratch version adapted for our robots (Studuino). It offers two interfaces.
A robotics part
On this interface, they drag and drop blocks into the script field to build a program that they then transfer to their robot’s programmable card.
An animation part
On this interface, schoolchildren animate one or more characters on the screen. They will be able to control them from a joystick or joystick made with the kit parts.
6 free educational booklets to teach programming
We offer, for the use of 1st degree teachers, 6 educational booklets in PDF format for free download on our École Robots website. This course covers two major disciplines of robotics: programming and mechanics.
- 3 programming booklets propose to program the movement of a robot (a car) and to program actuators (LED and buzzer) to make a small musical game.
- 3 mechanical booklets cover 3 basic mechanical elements: wheels, gears and camshafts.
Each booklet is divided into 2 chapters and gives rise to 2 one-hour courses, for a total of 12 hours of lessons.
What does a primary school programming course look like?
Programming robots in primary school curricula
| Cycle 2 : CP, CE1, CE2 | “Starting in CE1, students can code movements using adapted programming software, which will lead them to comprehension in CE2, and to the production of simple algorithms.” |
| Cycle 3 : CM1, CM2 | “An introduction to programming is given during locating or moving activities (programming the movements of a robot or a character on a screen), or geometric activities (building simple figures or figures composed of simple figures). |