STEAM – it’s a word that we’ve been hearing a lot of over the past few years. This year, the school I’m working at has STEAM as a focus for learning, so I have been particularly interested in learning more about this learning area and how I can integrate it into my Prep classroom.
Continue reading “How To Integrate STEAM Into Your Early Years Classroom”
LEGO® Education products are perfect for children who need a little more time to grasp STEM concepts, or who learn better hands-on. 10 primary teachers share their thoughts on the STEM solution bringing fun back into tech class.
Continue reading “10 Ways LEGO Education Will Transform Your STEM Lessons”
LEGO® Education has developed a comprehensive range of STEAM products that encourage students of all ages to design and create. Their latest product, BricQ Motion, is designed for students at primary and lower secondary school year levels. This wonderful kit provides hands-on STEAM learning experiences for students to explore forces and motion and their interactions.
There are two different kits in the LEGO Education BricQ Motion range:
Both of these kits provide students with templates/lessons that support the learning of STEAM concepts without the need for a device in hand. The kits are colour-coded, making it so much easier for students to locate the various LEGO pieces than ever before.
LEGO Education BricQ Motion Essential Kit
The BricQ Motion Essential Kit is a hands-on STEAM solution for early years students. This kit allows students to explore physical science and experiment and create to bring it to life. The science concepts that this set covers include:
Set includes:
LEGO Education BricQ Motion Prime Kit
The BricQ Morion Prime Kit challenges students in Year 5-8 to apply scientific inquiry skills while inspiring them to deepen their understanding of forces, motion and energy.
Science concepts that this set covers include:
Set includes:
To support teachers to get the most from these kits along with all other LEGO products, teachers can find detailed lesson plans on the LEGO Education website that include video tutorials and templates as well as additional challenges for students to explore, all linked to the curriculum. https://education.lego.com/
There are currently two curriculum units available for the BricQ Motions kits on the LEGO Education website that are designed for teachers to follow to support students in developing key curriculum learning outcomes.
Each curriculum unit contains:
Curriculum Unit: Train to Win (Years F – 2)
The ‘Train to Win’ curriculum unit explores the concepts of forces and motion. Students explore a range of investigations about the cause and effect of push and pull forces.
Curriculum Unit: Winning with Science (Year 3-6)
The ‘Winning with Science’ curriculum unit explores the concepts of forces and motions with a focus on the effects of balanced and unbalanced forces. Students investigate the patterns within an object’s motions and begin to predict and determine its future motion.
Lesson Ideas:
Whenever I introduce a new resource into the classroom, I believe it is important to allow students time to explore and engage with the resource to gather an understanding of what it can achieve.
The great thing about the LEGO Education kits is that the possibilities are truly endless. Teachers can choose to follow the lesson guides provided or allow students the opportunity to create their own masterpieces to suit their learning experience.
When introducing the LEGO Education BricQ Motion set, I had students work in pairs to recreate one of the creations within the lesson guides. When students completed their design, they each shared their creations with another group. Once students have the understanding of how the BricQ set works and the various elements provided within the kit, I can confidently provide students with challenges aligned to our units of work, where they can use the lesson guides as a starting point and then adapt and change where needed to design their own creation.
Below are some lesson ideas to engage your students with the LEGO Education BricQ Motion sets.
LEGO Education Mini Olympics
With the Olympics planned to go ahead this year, students can recreate many of the events using BricQ Motion. Students can explore and create the different science concepts whilst having fun and competing in various Olympic events. Teachers can connect learning to not only the science curriculum but also the mathematics curriculum by creating tallies and totals of the results for each event.
Events to include in your mini Olympics:
Rally Racing:
*Refer to the Gravity Car Derby lesson on the LEGO Education website as a guide for students to use and adapt.
Sailing Cars
*Refer to the Sailing Car lesson on the LEGO Education website.
ShotPut Throw:
* Refer to the Free Throw Catapult lesson on the LEGO Education website
Various Challenges:
The LEGO Education BricQ Motion kits provide many open-ended challenges for students to complete. These can be connected to the units of work you cover throughout the year.
Here are some challenges you might want to try with your students:
How will you use LEGO® Education BricQ Motion in your classroom? We’d love to hear from you!
About the author
Eleni Kyritsis is an award-winning Year 3 teacher and Leader of Curriculum and innovation from Melbourne, Australia. Eleni facilitates professional learning workshops around the world that focus on unleashing creativity and curiosity in classrooms. You can contact her at elenikyritis.com and @misskyritsis
LEGO® bricks have been a staple resource in schools around the world since they were first manufactured in 1949. In recent years, the LEGO® Education team has continued to develop and support STEM learning experiences for our students by creating a range of products that incorporate technologies, robotics and computer programming. The LEGO product range is equipped with resources that will engage and empower students to learn to code from our youngest learners through to secondary school students.
LEGO Education provides a continuum of learning through its products:
Foundation / Prep / Kinder /Reception – Year 1
LEGO® Education Coding Express
Years 2 – 4
LEGO® Education WeDo 2.0
Years 5 – 8
LEGO® Education SPIKE™ Prime
Years 6 – 12
LEGO® Mindstorms® Education EV3
The LEGO Education Website has a range of lesson plans and challenges for students to develop their engineering and programming skills.
LEGO Education’s most recent product launch is the LEGO Education SPIKE Prime. This kit supports students to develop the essential STEM and 21st century skills needed to become the innovative, confident and creative minds of tomorrow. SPIKE Prime forms part of the continuum that builds upon students’ prior knowledge of coding that they have developed through LEGO Education WeDo 2.0 block coding system.
Each SPIKE Prime kit can be used by a small group of students, preferably two to three students per group. The kit provides students with:
| Multi-Port Hub | Sensors | Motors |
| 6 x Input/Output ports 5 x 5 Light Matrix 6 x Axis Gyro Speaker |
1 x Colour/Light 1 x Distance/Ultrasonic 1 x Force/Touch |
1 x Large 2 x Medium |
The Hub connects to the LEGO Education SPIKE app via Bluetooth or USB. It is compatible across devices including iPad, computer and Chromebook, with the ability to carry multiple programs and be commanded to light up and play sounds. Extending the functionality of the Hub, there are six inputs/outputs to connect the motors or sensors to create movement, patterns and actions.
The LEGO Education SPIKE app intuitively introduces students to coding and robotics. The four SPIKE Prime curriculum units engage students while developing design skills, problem solving and critical thinking skills. Each of these units can be implemented into classrooms with focus on real world relevance.
The four curriculum units are broken into:
Invention Squad
Kickstart a Business
Life Hacks
Competition Ready
The LEGO Education SPIKE app includes a range of resources for both teachers and students, from lesson plans for teachers to templates that support students in building a range of creations using the kits.
Once students know the basic fundamentals of the kit, teachers can explore and integrate the skills learnt through the lesson plans and curriculum units to connect SPIKE Prime to other creative lesson ideas and challenges.
Six Lesson Ideas to Extend SPIKE Prime in the Classroom
Design a Mini Golf Course
Materials required:
The result….
Create a Moving Animal
Materials required:
Students work in pairs to create an animal of their choice.
Teachers can connect this challenge to various curriculum areas including endangered animals, ocean life, Australian animals etc.
Design a Sustainable House
Materials required:
Students design and create a sustainable house.
Create a Futuristic Car
Materials required:
Students will work in small groups to create a futuristic car
Code a Car Through a Racing Track
Materials required:
Create 2-3 race tracks (depending on the size of your classroom) on the floor using masking tape.
Extension:
Creating Obstacles on the Racing Track.
Materials required:
Using coloured LEGO blocks as obstacles, students can program their car to move around the track by adding the sensor to their car.
Create a Dancing Robot Dance Routine
Materials required:
Students will work in pairs and design their own robot. (Any students who find this difficult can use the template in the LEGO SPIKE app under BUILD – ‘Break Dancer’ to help them build a basic robot.)
The end result…
How do you use SPIKE Prime in your classroom? We would love to hear from you!
About the author
Eleni Kyritsis is an award winning Year 3 teacher and Leader of Curriculum and innovation from Melbourne, Australia. Eleni facilitates professional learning workshops around the world that focus on unleashing creativity and curiosity in classrooms. You can contact her at elenikyritis.com and @misskyritsis
LEGO® Education Coding Express
LEGO® Mindstorms® Education EV3
Louise McKinnon, a Primary Digital and Design Technologies Teacher who works at Springfield Central State School in Queensland talks to us about her experience of using LEGO® Education SPIKE Prime™ in the classroom.
LEGO Education provides a conceptual platform for the Digital and Design Technologies curriculum and enables authentic collaboration in the classroom. In our school, students use LEGO Education products from grade 1 to 6 in the Technology classroom which builds familiarity and enables them to feel confident to share ideas on how to engineer and program.
LEGO Education provides a multi-grade-level approach to students’ computational thinking in a logical manner. Moving from WeDo to SPIKE to EV3 Mindstorms allows students to begin with an easy entry point and progress to more complex thinking with technology. It allows students to feel safe to explore their creativity, not only through engineering and building with LEGO, but also within many other critical skills, such as teamwork, computational thinking, programming and more.
Being a LEGO school, SPIKE was an effortless platform to integrate into our lessons. Building upon the simplistic tasks with WeDo for the older students in grade 3-4 was super easy as their knowledge grew. Tasks on the LEGO Education website also provided an easy scaffold to build lessons around.
The children love SPIKE! They love the colours and the simplicity of the software is super accessible and promotes engagement for all students. They also love how it is built to look like Scratch, as they are all familiar with Scratch from their lesson progression in the lower grades.
SPIKE allows students to code through Scratch blocks, which is very familiar to our students. The block colours and easy-to-understand language in the blocks has helped students more easily debug and methodically work through issues, which some students found too advanced with Mindstorms.
SPIKE serves as the bridge between WeDo and Mindstorms that had been missing. The jump from WeDo to EV3 Mindstorms was intimidating for some students in relation to both the mechanical and technical sides of the platform. SPIKE has allowed for an effortless transition that is an appealing invitation for students to engage with and build the skills needed to confidently interact with Mindstorms.
A lot! My students love the accessibility of SPIKE. They love how the blocks stand out and are super easy to find. The new addition of the donut block has allowed students to overcome engineering issues with ease, which has helped them to feel confident and creative with the product.
LEGO Education has allowed students to work within many learning standards of the curriculum simultaneously due to the nature of the product. They are working within the Design and Technologies Knowledge and Understanding side of the curriculum through the computational thinking effect LEGO provides, while also engaging in the Design and Technologies Processes and Production Skills when they get to create and be hands-on with the product.
Students who felt disengaged and disheartened from the large leap to Mindstorms are now more engaged. They’re taking risks and becoming problem solvers due to the simplicity of the software and hardware components of SPIKE. The colours and fewer parts provide easier construction and navigation and less downtime troubleshooting.
The aha moment has happened a lot within the programming stage of students’ creations. Younger students are now more readily able to understand and connect the coding blocks as they are very familiar with these through Scratch. The blocks are no longer ambiguous or hard for students to understand. Lots of aha moments and smiles.
Give it a go. Have a play for yourselves and see the benefits it can have for teaching by being active with it. It is an amazing hands-on tool and the best way to see its abilities in the classroom is for the teacher to also be hands-on with the product.
Engaging, accessible and interactive.
Featured Product:
LEGO Education SPIKE Prime Set
Did you know that LEGO Education has over 400 FREE Lesson plans that can be sorted by Product, Grade and Subject.
Check them out here: https://education.lego.com/en-us/lessons
LEGO® storage is important. Done badly and you will spend your days finding LEGO elements in the strangest places, dealing with frustrated kids telling you for the third time that they can’t find the grey thingumy-jig and dreading the day your admins ask you to update the school’s asset register. Done correctly and your students will quickly find the elements they need, allowing them to stay focused and concentrate on addressing the challenges at hand.
