When you think of classroom robots, what comes to mind? Coding. STEM. Maybe a maze or a race. But what about characterization? Story structure? Cause and effect?
Robots are rarely associated with the reading and writing block, but they offer phenomenal opportunities to enhance and extend language arts instruction. With a bit of creative planning, robotics can become a powerful tool for supporting foundational ELAR skills and for bringing stories to life in a hands-on, memorable way.
Robots and Literature: A Natural Connection
While literacy and robotics may seem like an unlikely pairing, integrating them supports much more than just engagement. Students don’t just read about a character’s journey; they map it, program it, and bring it to life. And, they don’t just write a story; they code it into motion.
Robotics projects woven into ELAR instruction can boost:
- Sequencing: Program the robot to follow the order of events in a story.
- Cause and Effect: Code the robot’s actions based on story events.
- Characterization: Represent a character’s personality through costumes and through programmed movements, lights or decisions.
- Setting: Create physical scenes for robots to explore.
- Drama: Use robots as actors to retell scenes or perform student-written plays.
- Creative Writing and Storytelling: Encourage students to write original narratives and bring them to life through code.
Why Include Robots in Language Arts?
While activities like programming a robot to follow a story sequence or act out a character trait offer meaningful practice, their impact goes beyond skill-building. These creative projects set the stage for developing critical academic and interpersonal skills:
- Problem Solving: Students devise plans and troubleshoot, mirroring the revision process in writing.
- Collaboration: Working in teams fosters communication and cooperation.
- Engagement: Robots spark instant excitement and make lessons more creative, interactive, and memorable.
- Empathy: Planning a robot’s actions requires students to think through character motivations, making abstract concepts more concrete.
- 21st Century Skills: Robotics blends coding, creativity, communication, and critical thinking.
Bringing robotics into reading isn’t about adding gadgets; it’s about unlocking deeper engagement, authentic learning, and real-world competencies.
Planning Your Lesson
Hopefully I’ve sparked your interest in embedding robotics into your ELAR block, but how does that work with real world, everyday planning? Start as you would with any unit: identify your literacy focus. Are students practicing inference, summarizing, or analyzing theme? Choose a standard-aligned goal and a high-quality mentor text that supports that skill. With your anchor text in place, think through how robotics can enhance—not distract from—the learning experience.
Ask: How can robots help students visualize the story or explore the concept in a new way? For character analysis, students might program robots to make decisions that reflect personality traits. For sequencing, they could program plot events into a journey across the classroom.
Next, decide where the robotics activity fits in your lesson cycle. Will it be a culminating project to show comprehension? A pre-writing exercise to spark ideas? Consider any background knowledge or vocabulary students will need—both in ELAR and basic coding. With thoughtful planning, robotics activities can amplify your instruction in meaningful, purposeful ways.
Spotlight Activity: Balloons Over Broadway
One robotics-literacy integration that is likely the most popular activity done in classrooms across the U.S. is based on the book Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade by Melissa Sweet. While I didn’t invent this activity, it’s a favorite in schools across the U.S.—and for good reason.
The book shares the story of Tony Sarg, the original designer of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons. After reading and analyzing the text, students design and build their own parade floats using craft materials and recyclables. These floats are then attached to classroom robots—like Sphero or Dash—and programmed to follow a parade route.
As students work, they explore character motivations, innovation, perseverance, and cause-and-effect sequences in the text. They apply comprehension through action, translating story elements into motion.
**Pro Tip for Sphero Users: Place a Solo cup over a Sphero to create a rolling base. This opens up design possibilities for characters, floats, or moving objects.
The grand finale is a green screen video project where students film their robot floats “marching” through a digital New York City. This hands-on experience transforms reading comprehension into creative expression and it’s a great activity to share with families to boost community engagement during the holiday.
Content Standards Covered
This activity supports a range of core standards and can be used across multiple grade levels. Here are a few 3rd grade ELAR TEKS it aligns with:
English Language Arts and Reading TEKS
- 3.6(E): Make connections to personal experiences, ideas in other texts, and society.
- 3.6(H): Synthesize information to create new understanding.
- 3.9(D): Recognize characteristics and structures of informational text including the central idea with supporting evidence.
- 3.10(A): Explain author’s purpose and message within a text.
The Bigger Benefit
When students program a robot to act out a story, they are doing more than learning how to code; they’re learning how to read deeply, think critically, and express themselves creatively. They’re building connections not just between a character and their journey, but between their own ideas and the world around them. In a classroom where literature meets robotics, students will become active readers, storytellers, designers, and problem solvers. Reading and writing become the medium for expanding their own knowledge and creativity, and that’s the kind of learning that lasts.
Want to hear more from the author?
Join us at ETC this June 15-17 in Galveston, TX, to hear guest author Melanie Sowa-Li present sessions, “Robots and Read Alouds” and “Flippity Fun: Revamping Engagement through Digital Escape Rooms.”
