Learning about STEM with animal rescue in mind

Lesson Brief

• Australian middle school students learn about scientific principles of fire
• With the supervision of their teacher and ideally with the help of a local Australian firefighter, they show students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) classes how to determine when a fire started by accident or arson.
• Students using Kai’s Clan plan out an animal rescue mission

Lesson Insight

Educators know the importance of hands-on demonstrations in STEM lessons. When students can directly participate and experience real-world learning, their engagement peaks. It’s not just about coding a robot around a mat, it’s about making things come to life and have real-world associations.

Bringing firefighters into the classroom for a career opportunities day can provide students with a good understanding of the science of firefiretighting and open the door for other STEM careers.

Coding and designing robot fire rescue scearios

The beauty about incorporating Kai’s Clan into your lessons is the abbility to have multiple job roles for each student / robot player in the fire rescue lesson.

Giving students the ability to practice and role play different situations or scenarios that can be imagined and visualised is an important modern technology practice that supports student learning and prepares them for their future STEM carreers.

Kai’s Clan has been designed so that students learn about coding by practicing storytelling with cross-coricular activities. They build their stories by sequencing actions and navigating objects on the include AR VR mats. They plan and build their code collaboratively with other students and take turns in the performaing actions.

The students are divided into different roles whith characters / robots on the mat. Each phyiscal robot on the mat is represented as a virtual character in AR or VR.

Example: Firetruck, Kangaroo, Koala, honeyeater

You can print out these QR codes  and then place them on the mat,  these can be used to represent static objects like fires, trees, platations etc…