Tag: classroom management

The importance of recording your work

RobotComparisonChart

LEGO offers an amazing opportunity for students to build both easily and quickly. You don’t have to get specialized pieces and tools to make a robot or an engineering model. Students love being able to just sit down and start putting those pieces together. This is the magic that LEGO brings. However, students building with […]

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A Week in the Life #8: Moving With Linkages

LEGO Strand Beast

I teach an introductory course using the LEGO Mindstorms EV3 set. My students are 7th graders who are required to take the course and may not necessarily have any background in programming/building. My school is on a trimester schedule so the course runs for thirteen weeks at a time. For this particular trimester I have […]

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TrotBot Walking Machine

TrotBot

After teaching a challenge-based LEGO Engineering class for two years, I wanted to offer a really difficult challenge for a dozen of my most motivated students (grades 6-8). I settled on linkage-based walkers, like Theo Jansen’s Strandbeest. Rather than copy prototypes or plans, I had the class study various linkage mechanisms, their trade-offs, and how they can […]

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A Week in the Life #1: Play Well!

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This is the second of probably fourteen posts, each chronicling in detail the ins and outs of my Robotics class. I teach an introductory course using the LEGO Mindstorms EV3 set. My students are 7th graders who are required to take the course and may not necessarily have any background in programming/building. My school is […]

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Project rules to foster collaboration, not chaos

sam snail

 Projects are an engaging way to teach STEM concepts, engineering design, and a host of soft skills—collaboration, communication, resilience. However, a project-based classroom can easily veer towards chaos and ugly competition. How do you encourage students to tackle open-ended, creative, and challenging projects while fostering an atmosphere of cooperation and generosity? After a good deal […]

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I no longer go to school to teach, I go to play!

The ICE lab after

I no longer go to school to teach, I go to play. I have become a coach and a tinkerer – not a teacher. Coaching students to think, solve problems, and ask questions; encouraging them to think outside the box, experiment, and tinker. Imagine, Create, and Engineer – a motto we live by in the […]

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Tips for using LEGO materials with young children

Lego_Color_Bricks

Getting started with LEGO materials in the classroom with young children can be exciting and challenging. This article gives you some tips for making it easier and more effective. LEGO materials are a great platform for introducing young children (ages 5-8) to science and engineering concepts. However, as a popular option during choice time or […]

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Thinking outside the box: A look into LEGO organization and sorting

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Whether you have a classroom full of bricks and RCXs or a brand new set of  Technic beams and NXTs, teachers who use LEGO materials all have a common problem—how to organize those all of those pieces. So, how do you organize your pieces? LEGOengineering.com surveyed 133 educators from around the world on how they […]

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