Hannah Gosling, a Teacher at Drapers’ Brookside Junior School in Romford, has launched Musical Maths Robots to inspire children to enjoy maths in new ways. Wanting to help students with low engagement and attainment, Hannah brought programmable robots into the classroom. Combining Quirkbot Robots, BBC Micro:Bits and Makey Makey boards, Hannah’s Musical Maths Robots project allows children to code robots in a number of different ways.

Children have to solve mathematical problems in order to receive the next piece of code or part of robot to build various models with. But the real fun starts when the students get to write the code for music on the Micro:Bits and play it using a homemade speaker. The Quirkbots are also touch sensitive and can be programmed so each part responds to different musical notes.

Hannah is currently working with 15 children in Year 6 at her school, running a session every few weeks, with the overall aim of enhancing an individual’s numeracy and maths skills. With support from Let Teachers SHINE, the project has been kick-started for 11 sessions over the course of the year. Even though the project has currently only been run with primary school children, Hannah would like to see it expand into secondary schools.

Although the project is still in its early stages, as a result of Musical Maths Robots Hannah has seen the children flourishing in the school group environment, with a noticeable difference in their engagement, self-confidence and learning behaviours. The students are continually asking when the next Musical Maths Robots session is taking place.

To find out more about our Teachers-Led Innovation competitions, please visit this page. Or to read Hannah’s full interview, visit the Capita SIMS blog.