What are Robot Cards?

The Data Education in Schools Team have been developing Robot Cards. These have been created for use in a Primary School classroom to give students an introduction to concepts in statistics and data analysis. As well as this, an aim of the Robot Cards is to encourage learners to think about and gain an interest in Robotics. We have worked in collaboration with the National Robotarium during the development of these cards.

Students can go from using the cards to learn about early mathematical concepts such as ordering, to creating simple graphs such as bar charts and scatterplots with the cards.

When exploring the cards, students may have questions that arise such as “I wonder how cost relates to size?”, “What factors does the class of the robot affect?”. After exploring the cards and engaging in activities, students can plan their investigation into their hypotheses.

These cards have taken inspiration from the Dragonistics Data Cards by Dr. Nic at Creative Maths and Stats.

Downloadable files

This section includes files that you can download now to use with your class! This includes printable version of the cards. There are 99 in the PDF. A slide deck is also included which has some suggestions for activities to carry out with your class.

Printing Instructions

When printing the cards, select either with background or without background. If printing with background, print double sided. If printing without background, choose single sided.

Cross-curricular links

We have heard from teachers who have helped us try the cards out in schools that they have been useful for helping with other subjects in the primary curriculum too.

There is room for linking to English Literacy, linking to books about robots, encouraging critical thinking about the purpose of robots.

After discovering the Robot Cards, Mairi Stevenson’s P5 class at Lorne Primary decided to create their own, and will explore further into what the role of each robot is in helping people and the world.

Help shape the robot cards!

This is the first public release of the robot cards. Currently they are available in a digital version, but we plan to print physical card sets. If you’d like to help shape the final version of the cards, please fill in this feedback form. Any feedback you have would be very valuable.