The first presentation was from Special Education teacher Sarah Steinbach. She spoke on the school’s outdoor learning efforts.

Steinbach said that in observing how the different preschool and kindergarten classes use the outdoor space, she has adapted new methods for teaching special educations student.

“One of the simplest things we can do is take our writing lessons outdoors,” Steinbach said. Teachers at WLC will sometimes take students outdoors to practice writing letters and numbers on the sidewalk with chalk. Steinbach said there is a benefit to teaching special education students to write outdoors.

“Oftentimes their fine motor skills are not developed and they get frustrated trying to write on the paper,” she said. Some students have sensory aversions and bringing them into an outdoor setting can be helpful.

New Ulm School Board member Melissa Sunderman (left) and Sarah Leslie (right) try a coding exercise during Thursday’s school board work session. The board members must input a code to move the bee-shaped robot through a two-dimensional space. The exercise was a sample of the work Washington Learning Center (WLC) students are doing with STEM teacher Angela Hoek.

In addition to writing outdoors, she has incorporated a measuring lesson. After the kids write a letter or number with chalk, they can use rulers to measure the length and width of the figure.

Students have also begun working in the WLC garden and learning about composting.

“This is good for their executive planning skills and just for them to gain some confidence by doing something valuable for the whole school,” Steinbach said.

WLC’s outdoor space is used during the winter. Steinbach said that students are able to learn about the different states of matter by freezing water. One popular exercise was teaching the students ice bowling. The students would create an ice ball by freezing water in a balloon and using a mold to create ice pins. The students are asked to set up the pins, which teaches them numbers but also how to follow a diagram.

One of the most popular outdoor programs at WLC is the bird feeder, sometimes called Bird-Fi. The school maintains a bird feeder with a web camera. The students are able to see a video of different birds exploring the feeder.

A new coding robot, designed to teach preschoolers and kindergartners.

“They are really good at becoming little ornithologists,” Steinbach said.

The second WLC update came from Angela Hoek, the learning center’s media specialist, technology teachers and most recently a robotics teacher. Her presentation focused on a new coding tool in use at WLC. Last year, Hoek was awarded a grant from the ISD Foundation to purchase special coding robots called “Bee-Bots.”

The bee-shaped robots are decided to accept simple coding instructions from preschoolers and Kindergartners.

“The reason I wrote the grant was to incorporate basic programming/coding skills with the students,” Hoek said.

“It’s great for teaching directionality with the students,” Hoak said. In order to program the Bee-Bots to move, the students must input the different directions but pressing buttons on the bot. This helps teach them left and right in addition to coding.

New Ulm School Board member Melissa Sunderman (center) and Sarah Leslie (right) test drive the new coding robots with the help of WLC technology teacher Angela Hoek.

Students must input a step-by-step set of instructions to make the bot move along the correct path.

“If it doesn’t work, the students have to work on the problem-solving,” Hoek said. “What do we do to fix that code?”

School board members Melissa Sunderman and Sarah Leslie volunteered to test drive the robot. The two worked together to program the Bee-Bot through a map space.

The first test run did not go as expected, with the bot missing a turn. Sunderman and Leslie were able to fix the code to complete the second test run.

“Kids do need to communicate and problem-solve together,” Sunderman said. “That was fun.”

These robots are already in use at Jefferson Elementary. By bringing the robots to WLC, the program could be expanded at Jefferson.

The next regular school board meeting will be held 5 p.m. Thursday, May 22, in the District Boardroom.