Students can be organized groups of two to four students when engaging in the Play section.
The following roles can be utilized:
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Reader - This person ensures that everyone reads the article on the sensor together before proceeding with the activity.
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Programmer - This person will open the Testbed template example project, build, and save the project given.
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Tester - This person selects the project and then runs it on the Testbed. This person will also be the one to end the project.
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Recorder - This person writes down all of the group answers/reflections in the engineering notebook.
If there are two students in each group, the students can each choose two roles. If there are three students in a group, one of the students can choose to do two roles. If there are four students in a group, each student can have one role.
Provide the list of roles and their definitions to the students. Once students are in their groups, allow the members to choose their role. Circulate the classroom and makes sure that every student has a role. There is an optional collaboration rubric which can be found by clicking on one of the following links (Google Doc/.docx/.pdf)
Remind the students of roles throughout the exploration. For roles to work, students have to feel as though they will be held accountable for fulfilling those roles. Therefore, interject if you see a student taking over someone else’s role or not fulfilling their assigned role. Reminders about who is supposed to be doing what can be useful interventions.