GLF Schools

GLF Schools

GLF Schools was founded in 2012 in order to enable the federation of Glyn School (an academy in 2011) and Danetree Junior School. Together, we began our journey to become a MAT of more than 1000 talented staff working with over 10,000 children in 40 schools across 5 regions in southern England.

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Posted on: 10/05/2021

Sphero Bolt Power Pack

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Chapter 1 - The Journey Begins

Hammond Junior School in Lightwater, Surrey is very excited about the recent arrival of the Sphero Bolt Power Pack on the premises. 

Having created a new role within the school for a Computing Specialist, responsible for delivering the IT lessons for all KS2 year groups along with lunchtime IT clubs, Hammond were looking for ideas to offer new and engaging activities and learning possibilities to inspire the next generation of coders and computational thinkers. Sphero Bolt along with its Computer Science Foundations (CSF) Curriculum ticks all the right boxes. It offers a complete solution of learning through play with app enabled robotic balls filled with lots of programmable sensors and a colourful programmable 8x8 LED matrix. 

The Sphero Fundamentals Teacher Training gave us a solid introduction to the Sphero Edu app and how to code in 3 naturally progressive ways: by drawing on a touch-screen, using Scratch blocks or writing JavaScript text programs. The potential for students at Hammond to easily progress with their coding skills and transition from block to text based coding before they move onto Secondary School is particularly exciting. Scratch coding is already taught across all our KS2 year groups so learning to code with Sphero should be a natural progression enabling students to apply and utilise existing skills in a new, different and engaging way.

In the first instance Hammond will be introducing Sphero Bolt to Year 6 students through lunchtime clubs supplementing their IT learning from their in-school lessons with the opportunity to broaden their coding skills through play with fun activities.  Feedback from this year group will be invaluable and we then plan to introduce the Sphero CSF Curriculum into weekly IT lessons for all year groups as part of the IT planning for the next academic year matched to National Curriculum requirements.

The staff at Hammond were all very excited to see Sphero Bolt for the first time and now we can’t wait to see the children’s reactions. 

Follow our journey with Sphero Bolt at Hammond Junior School.