After students watch the video and before practicing, come together for a whole-class discussion. Use student answers to the questions provided as the basis for discussion.

As you engage in the discussion with students, model the skills and dispositions that support respectful scientific discourse. 

• Solicit differing opinions from students as they share observations and ideas. 
• Remind students to listen to all contributions and share how their thinking is similar or different with evidence.
• Help students to frame their questions in a productive way, revising them together if needed.

Note students' contributions on the board so students can see and build upon each other's ideas.

Foreground group work expectations at the start. Ask questions like:

• How will your group share the responsibility of planning a path for the robot?
• How can you take turns while coding your robot?
• What is something you can do to be helpful if it is not your turn to code?

Distribute task cards to each student. Remember, the provided task card (Google / .docx / .pdf) is the basis for the activity and is in an editable format. Adapt the task card to best meet the needs of your students. 

• Remind students to document their learning on the bottom half of the task card. The sentence stem is provided to prompt students' thinking about what they learned through group discussions.
  • To have students plan their projects using the printables shown in the video, print and distribute these printable buttons. Students can also keep track of their Button Coding projects with the Button Coding Planning sheet as well.
• Students can continue documenting their learning in their journals as well. The journal is their tool for making thinking visible, and is meant to be used for sketching, writing, and creatively documenting learning in the way that works best for them. 

Circulate around the room as students engage in the practice activity in their groups to discuss student progress and understanding. Ask questions like:

• How are you documenting the sequence you coded?
• What is the most challenging part of coding the robot for you?
• How did your group collaborate to plan and complete this project?

Guide students to share their learning in a whole-class discussion. The questions students answered in their journal are the starting point for discussion. Ask follow-up questions to guide students to converge their thinking around shared understandings. Follow up with questions like: 

• For collaboration: 
  • How will that strategy serve you moving forward in this course? Why? Did anyone else have a similar or different way to collaborate? 
• For additional learning: 
  • Do you agree or disagree? Why? What else did we learn through practice that will help us use Button Coding? 
  • What are some common ideas we can agree on? 
• For planning and button presses:
  • How would your project have changed if you changed the order, or sequence, of button presses?

Note strategies for collaboration and Button Coding that emerge from the discussion for students to reference moving forward, as an artifact of their shared understanding. Remind students that they can use their journals at any time to help them explain their ideas and articulate their thinking. They can share path drawings, read from their task card documentation, or sketch ideas in their journal to help make sense of the discussion.

For insight into the importance of developing students' spatial reasoning skills, such as those used in Button Coding, see this VEX PD+ Insights Article.