|
Re: Creating an After School Lego Program
I have run such a program at my son's school. A couple pieces of advice. The younger the kids, the shorter the sessions. With any group of kids you will reach a tipping point in their attention spans. If the sessions need to be longer from a schedule standpoint, build in a free play break in the middle.
As for what to do, I had pretty good success using tasks from old FLL challenges. It was easy to get the pieces for one or two tasks from a given challenge, and then the kids could spend anywhere from one session to three sessions working toward solving that challenge. I always started with simple tasks to get them used to driving, programming, sensing and manipulating. Things like navigating a rectangle, dropping a ball in a bin, touching a wall and coming back to a starting position. Then built up to more complicated tasks. We also had mini competitions such as drag races, pushing competitions or "how far can you throw the ball" competitions.
We ended almost every session with all of the groups demonstrating what they had done and discussing. I had them write down in a notebook what they were going to work on first the next time.
__________________
Thank you Bad Robots for giving me the chance to coach this team.
Rookie All-Star Award: 2003 Buckeye
Engineering Inspiration Award: 2004 Pittsburgh, 2014 Crossroads
Chairman's Award: 2005 Pittsburgh, 2009 Buckeye, 2012 Queen City
Team Spirit Award: 2007 Buckeye, 2015 Queen City
Woodie Flowers Award: 2009 Buckeye
Dean's List Finalists: Phil Aufdencamp (2010), Lindsey Fox (2011), Kyle Torrico (2011), Alix Bernier (2013), Deepthi Thumuluri (2015)
Gracious Professionalism Award: 2013 Buckeye
Innovation in Controls Award: 2015 Pittsburgh
Event Finalists: 2012 CORI, 2016 Buckeye
|