Summary
This blog post details my experience working with my teacher partner in taking a lesson written for us and transforming it into a lesson capable of meeting the needs of our students and sharing our passion for technology while introducing them to life skills like computational thinking, tinkering, algorithmic thinking, and more.
Practical Component:
My school is implementing a new LEGO Robotics program. My co-teacher instructs three out of the four 3rd grades, and I teach one section on Fridays. Our school worked with professional developers to create a series of eight lessons that incorporate some of our 3rd grade standards on Force and Motion. We received one session of professional development and the first four lessons. I went to observe the rollout of the first lesson.
6/10/23 New Lego Robotic Curriculum Lesson 1 – Teacher Stacy Sliver
Grade Level: 3rd
Topics: Learning Tools, Accessibility, Computational Thinking
Class Period: 45 min (30-35 mins of active lesson time)
Observations:
- Students were excited to learn LEGO robotics but struggled with following the lesson as laid out by the slides.
- Many students we off task during the lesson parts.
- Students struggled with text on slides. (The graphics and language were not kid-friendly.).
- By the time the class got through most of the slides, they hardly had any time to actually interact with the materials, which was very frustrating.
- Students we highly engaged in the hands-on sections.
After Lesson Debrief:
Me: Tell me how you think Lesson one went.
Stacy: This was very frustrating for me and my students. This should be such an exciting and fun experience.
My school paid to have lessons written for LEGO Spike Essentials. This is new to me, my students, and our school. I’ve spent hours , taking inventory and organizing kits, and even had 3 hrs of training. We practiced this lesson in the training but it doesn’t work with the kids. I don’t have any evidence of learning other than what I saw, but I don’t have time to write down anecdotal information as I am putting out fires. The lessons were supposed to be written custom for my needs but later I found out the intermediary made choices that don’t fit my needs.
I have several students who are not fluent in English, and none of the slides were available in Spanish.They probably could follow pictures. There are also many students who have other learning challenges and need structure. If there is too much time between tasks, they are distracted and off task, creating behavior issues. This is especially true when they are seated in front of a box of LEGOs.
Me: What do you know about computational thinking?
Stacy “I have heard it used but haven’t really learned much about it, but I am not sure what it means. I feel like it is here in the lesson but I am not sure.” “I have to teach the 2nd lesson next week and I just don’t think it is going to work.”
Task: Redesign Lesson 2 to meet the needs of the diverse learners, speed the pacing, and streamline the lesson. Additionally develop a response sheet to collect evidence of learning.
Review of Lesson:
The lesson uses the 5E model. The lesson as written is longer than time allows. Activities are doable but underestimate the talk time for productive conversation. The second activity has too much movement around the room for a larger class to be productive. The accompanying slides are busy, boring, and wordy. Students with reading challenges and new language learners are unable to follow along.
Solution:
- Added a more engaging slide background.
- Added a clip from a Hollywood movie demonstrating constraints in engineering and the use of precise communication for programming, both of which the students were expected to do in the lesson
- Added definitions (model, constraint)
- Added timers to slides with independent or partner work.
- Added Spanish slides (can be hidden for classes without ELL kids)
- Embedded computational thinking – algorithmic thinking (coding the LEGO object), abstraction (LEGO elements brick vs axel vs flats), decomposition (figuring out how to build the object from a description) , pattern recognition (the naming of the LEGO elements)
- Created visually simple but technically precise worksheets in English and Spanish for students to complete at the end of the lesson to solidify and demonstrate their learning.
6/15/23 Lesson 2
Me: How do you think the lesson went?
Stacy: “Fit better in the time, kids were much happier and more engaged. My ELL Spanish speakers were better able to engage in the lesson. In addition, I felt more successful and was more optimistic about my ability to effectively teach the unit going forward.”
Instructional and Design Models:
I approached this project with a UDL mindset and kept the 5E model as the original lesson had been written. I considered barriers that might interfere with students being able to participate and gain the knowledge needed to understand the concepts being taught. UDL focuses on using three areas to increase student learning, engagement, representation, and action and expression. Adding video clips, pictures, kid-friendly language, and timers increased student engagement. Having multilingual copies of the key slides allowed more students to feel represented. The LEGO program has the ability to read to the students also lowering barriers for students who need auditory cues to better comprehend.
Some of the challenges we faced are time, student engagement, clear lesson goals and outcomes, and documenting student understanding. The lessons were written way too long and didn’t provide enough exploration time for the kids which is essential to keep their attention to tasks. Both Stacy, myself and the students were frustrated with the initial lesson. So, when we looked at the prospect of teaching Lesson 2 as written we knew we could not do it. I told Stacy I would take her notes from Lesson 1 and my experience as well, and redesign our second lesson. We have taken this experience and redesigned all subsequent lessons. The addition of streamlined response/reflection sheets, video clips, alternative languages, and scaffolding experiences, sometimes breaking lessons into two parts, has allowed us to better meet the needs of our students and make these lessons even more engaging and meaningful.
My school has implemented a new program for third graders during our technology period, LEGOS Robotics. Our administration is working with a 3rd party company that specializes in connecting schools with professional learning. Our school purchased 18 LEGOS Spike Essential Kits and a series of 8 lessons. This was done without any input from both myself and Stacy, my partner teacher. By the time we were integrated into the process five of the eight lessons had been written without our input. The lessons are focused on the NGSS SEPs and begin using the standard LEGO Lesson available for free on the LEGO Spike website. Fortunately we were matched with some providers that have a deep understanding of the LEGO program and experience in adding extensions that could support our main curriculum. After our first professional development session we were able to give more feedback and participate in the process. We asked that the lessons extend the Force and Motion unit. We had a balance of 17 hrs of PD remaining in the final two months of school, to which we’ve negotiated rolling over some of the time to the next school year. Finding time for the PD and having time to consolidate our thinking and learning, while still teaching a full class load and not being given extra time was a challenge.
The first PD was more set up, material management and discussing processes. There was very little actual learning how to teach LEGO Robotics. Subsequent PD has been more focused on giving us an opportunity to try the lessons as written and ask questions and further share our needs and expectations for the subsequent lessons.
My takeaways from this experience is that the person using a customized curriculum should be part of the initial conversations. I think had we been consulted with the delivery of the first two lessons we could have given clearer expectations and communicated more clearly about the needs of the students. The work was done without any UDL lens or accounting for students who speak other languages. Additionally the lessons were longer than the period allowed and didn’t take into account learning styles of students. I used my knowledge of UDL, Triple E, and the 5E models to first redesign the second lesson of our unit. I added a video, simplified the instructions, restyled the slide presentation, added some vocabulary support, provided support in other languages, and shortened the lesson to fit within the given time period.
The modifications were so successful my teacher partner and I decided to use this approach with the subsequent lessons. As the students progressed into more complex and independent work we decided to allow the students to complete the LEGO lesson on the Spike App as written and then in the following class introduce the customized lesson that would extend the learning and focus on our chosen standards. We made sure the lessons that had not been delivered were sent on a plain background to make our work in transforming them easier. We also decided to take the 8 lessons and turn them into a 16 week unit that includes some time for free exploration and open problem solving.
The biggest modification we will work on is offering a more open challenge where students will be able to demonstrate mastery and have more agency in how they will demonstrate it.
The end result is through this project we were able to utilize the trainers basic outlines and expertise with the LEGO program and add our knowledge of what the students need and how the best learn to create a series of lesson that meet our goals of learning about technology in an authentic way while meshing it with our unit on forces.
Institutionally to implement a program like LEGO robotics you would need a large budget so that each class has its own set of kits, space to store them securely, computer/chromebooks with access to bluetooth (one per kit), good and reliable connectivity, and training in the basics of how LEGO robotics and the coding protocols work. Once that challenge is met, there are tremendous benefits as it is the perfect instrument for practicing computational thinking, communicating with others, collaboration skills, design solution skills, and more.
My work in this capstone project as the instructional designer enabled me to look at this not just as a teacher and end-user, but with a more critical eye looking at how to best harness the possibilities and move past the challenges.
