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The students worked in groups Thursday morning, first placing colorful cones on a board here and there, with miniature bowling pins mixed in.

Through their Chromebooks, they had the power to move small, blue robots forward, in reverse and to turn this way or that as they tried to weave in between the obstacles and knock over the pins.

If the Dash robot turned the wrong way or hit a cone, the students had to start over, but that was part of the fun, fifth grade student Easton Snyder said.

“Trial and error,� he said. “Like they say, you try once, try again.�

Students could make the assignment as easy or as complex as they wanted. The more cones, the more difficult the course. Once they had it down and their robots had successfully knocked each pin over without hitting a cone, they could switch things up and create a new course to solve.

The robots are controlled via a coding application on their laptops, allowing students to choose each movement the robot makes, and in what order.

Students are taught coding and computer science at all 40 elementary schools at Lincoln Public Schools starting in kindergarten. As they get older, the coding techniques get more and more complicated.

Brynlee Roberts, also in the fifth grade, has enjoyed seeing how much she has been able to learn about coding over the years, especially now that lessons are becoming more complex.

“It's really fun just to try and see all the new things that you've learned every year,� she said. “It’s definitely a little bit harder because we've never used obstacles like this before.�

Working with robots and coding teaches students patience, teamwork and problem-solving skills, said Susan Prabulos, a computer science teacher at Meadow Lane.

“My job at this point is to kind of watch and guide and help,� she said. “They're showing me all of the skills they've already learned on how to tackle a problem, how to break it down and then how to test and debug.�

These critical thinking skills can also be transferred to not only other classes like math and reading, but to real life as well, Prabulos said.

“Computer science is all around us in our daily life — from smartwatches to phones — and it's good for kids to know how those things work,� she said. “Whether they become actual computer scientists later or not, we all have to problem solve, so it's teaching them that at an early age.�

Learning to code can be intimidating for a lot of people, Prabulos said, which is why it’s important to start teaching students the craft at a young age.

To help remind her students that they can always lean on each other and try again when things get hard, Prabulos has her students chant a class mantra at the start of each day: Bring it every day, have each other's back, fail forward and be kind.

“I think those are skills for life,� she said. “And they're vital in my classroom because we have to support one another and do our best as we are learning to code and learning to tackle some hard problems.�