Inquiry + Lego + Scratch = Magic!

"We only think when confronted with a problem."*
~ John Dewey

Last year when our parent association provided us with 12 sets of WeDo Lego I was over the moon, knowing that the students were going to love working with this material as they explored simple machines during a unit of inquiry. And it was fantastic - the kids loved it, the parents and other teachers were impressed by the complex creations the students had built and I was thrilled with the compatibility to Scratch which allowed them to programme their mini-robots.

But (and there is usually a but when you jump right into something new!) I wasn't as happy as I thought I would be. After thinking about the experience with the students I realised that it was just too prescriptive and I questioned how much the students had actually learned. They followed directions really well and built some very interesting machines, but there was nothing creative about the process. There were no challenges to solve (except perhaps for a few of the programming aspects) and I honestly do not think it deepened their understanding of how simple machines worked or why we might use them.

This year I vowed to do things differently. While I love using Lego and I knew the potential was there for some highly engaging learning experiences, I had to reconsider what I was doing in my limited time as a technology teacher with the students. I went back to my roots and approached the unit on simple machines as I would if it were my own class, embracing inquiry and project-based learning.

With their homeroom teachers, my Year 3 (Grade 2) students explore the central idea: Humans use their understanding of simple machines to serve a variety of purposes, learning  about simple machines, how they work and what they might be used for in our daily lives. After some initial research^[1], I created a project that I hoped would extend and deepen this understanding through our once a week technology lessons using WeDo Lego and Scratch: We would build an amusement park for Mini-Lego people!

I had been using the Engineering Design Process with older students and thought that this might be a good invitation to the project. After an initial discussion about what an engineer does, we decided it was important to learn about the materials they would be using as engineers in the project and so, the first step was some free exploration time. Our first lesson was devoted to playing with the Lego pieces, experimenting, asking questions about what they might do, trying to make things fit and work. Many of the students quickly made connections to the simple machines they had explored in their classrooms and some of the students with previous Lego and Scratch experience recognised the motors and sensors. I was already happier than the previous year's experience with the level of discussion and the willingness of the students to take risks and help each other.

During out next meeting students formed engineering teams to test the effect of gears on a wheel and axel. Using this presentation, we had a guided exploration of some of the key pieces they would need for the eventual project task. I owe a debt of gratitude to Tim Ewers, whose lesson on WeDo Robotics in the Classroom formed the basis of our tests. Students built a simple propeller, programmed it to run using Scratch, and then observed and recorded the effects of changing motor speed and adding different gears. At the end of the lesson we shared our findings and discussed how this information might be useful to us as engineers when designing and building something.

Our next meeting built on the ideas from the previous lesson, now with a focus on pulleys and belts. I decided that it would be helpful to build one of the Lego Education projects to give students some experience in following directions and seeing how the WeDo pieces can fit together. The Dancing Birds project was a great fit as it introduced not only the pulley and belt, but also the crown gear to the students, while reinforcing the use of axles and gears. Again, students worked in their teams to collect data about the effects of using different types of belts and pulleys and at the end of the lesson we shared our findings and continued the conversation about what we had learned as engineers.

It was now time to introduce the project, time to become Amusement Park engineers! We shared what we already knew about amusement parks, why people might go there and what a good ride might look like. Using this presentation, I shared the task with the students:

You are an amusement park engineer. You have been asked to work in a team to design and build a new ride for the Lego Mini Amusement Park. 

Then, the students and I developed the following success criteria that we added to the slide:

Your ride must:

• Be built using Lego
• Fit at least one Lego mini figure
• Move
• Be programmed in Scratch to move automatically
• Include at least one simple machine

We discussed some possible rides for our amusement park and then students formed new teams based on their initial ideas of what they may want to design. The groups looked at books and pictures of amusement parks and then sketched their ideas for their own rides. After sketching, students were asked to think about how they might build these ideas using Lego and this often led to a redesign, especially for some of the more elaborate ideas.

Once a team's design was agreed upon by the group, the building, testing and tinkering phase began. Without a doubt, this was my favourite part of the entire project. The students began building and immediately started testing their ideas. They were trying things and when it didn't work, they would try something else - showing great determination as well as flexibility their thinking. Students listened to each other, learned from each other and helped other teams when they discovered how to make something work. My role during this phase was really one as a co-learner, working along side the students. I am not a Lego expert and for many of their problems, I did not know the answer and so we learned together. It was an amazing experience!

The building, testing, tinkering lessons carried on for a few weeks and the level of student engagement never waned. In fact, every week I was insisting that students stop working and go for their lunch break - I'm sure they would have stayed in working on their rides all afternoon. Before we put all of the rides together into our Mini Amusement Park, students had an opportunity to share their rides with their classmates in a brief presentation. They explained what they had built, the challenges they had faced and what they did to overcome them. If a team was still having problems, their classmates had an opportunity to share possible solutions. At the end of their presentation, students also shared what they would like to do if they had more time or if they were to approach this project again. Afterwards, students had the remainder of the class to refine their rides before placing them into the amusement park. I was very pleased to see that many of the students took the ideas and suggestions from their classmates to fix or improve upon their creations.

Upon reflection I would have to say that this unit was certainly one of the highlights of my school year, if not my entire time as a technology coordinator. While still a guided inquiry, there was a freedom to the project that allowed different students to approach the task in different ways. The expectations were high, but every student was able to participate and experience success. It was a time of authentic and meaningful collaboration, and I know without a doubt that learning took place. But I think what impressed me the most about this project was the students' sense of accomplishment at working through the design process and creating something on their own - it was an empowering experience. The look of pride on their faces when teachers, parents and secondary school students were drawn into the room to see their amusement park was priceless. I think my students summed it up the best when I asked them what was the hardest thing about this project they answered, 'Building our rides using Lego.' and when I asked them what was the best thing about it was, they answered, 'Building our rides using Lego!'

Our Finished Amusement Park

Acknowledgements

[1] The idea of an amusement park project was sparked by reading, The Playground: First and Second Grade Curriculum Unit on Programming and Robotics by Amanda Sullivan et.al., in The DevTech Research Group of Tufts University. Some of the key ideas from their paper resonated with me and what I was trying to achieve with my own students, especially the use of the Engineering Design Process and inviting students to think like engineers.

* This quote is a summary of Dewey's views and according to Quote Investigator cannot be traced to any one work.

Modelling a Mindset: An essential element of technology literacy

"Whether you think you can, or think you can't - you're right." ~ Henry Ford

Technology provides new opportunities for teaching and learning that were previously not possible and are just downright 'cool'. I love exploring possibilities and seeing how my students might utilise new technologies to enhance their learning. I've come to realise however that my own enthusiasm can, at times, be a double-edged sword.

Image: Ideas, Forte Comunicacio by Magnoroi on Deviant Art 
CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0

In my previous blog post I was thinking about what it means to be technologically literate. One of my big 'take aways' was the notion that we must have a growth mindset, one that embraces design thinking where testing, failing and perseverance are critical components of learning and achieving the goals we set for ourselves. I believe that it is important to model this mindset for our students, ensuring that the learning environment we foster encourages this type of exploration and problem solving. I believe this, I say it, I want it, but in the harsh light of day, do I really do it.

I came to this rather startling realisation at about two in the morning one school night as I was learning how to use a new virtual space that I wanted to use with a particular class. Earlier that day, during a collaborative planning session, a teaching team was discussing how students might hold an art exhibit as a part of the summative assessment for an inquiry into how we express ourselves. Of course, I piped up and thought out loud, "Wouldn't it be cool if we could have a virtual exhibit for the students to share their digital creations as well? We could also film or photograph their other pieces (dance, music, paintings, sculptures, etc) and share them in this space so family and friends in other places could view their work!" Very keen to see what might be available and how it might work, I set about my explorations as soon as I got home from work. When I finally looked up and saw the time, I had to seriously ask myself, why am I doing this?

Image: No Frustration by SFoerster on Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA-3.0

Time. In a traditional classroom time can be quite rigid - you may have a 40 minute class once or twice a week. Perhaps you are fortunate to find yourself in a more flexible environment that allows for the 'dropping of a timetable' occasionally, or even in a school that embraces flexible block scheduling. As a single subject teacher I often feel I do not have enough time to spend with all of the classes. I was so concerned that my students would not have time to prepare a virtual gallery that I solved the problem myself. I spent hours trying to figure it out so my students wouldn't have any difficulty sharing their work. While I may have modelled design thinking in solving this problem, there was no one there to see it. But worse than that, I feel I have robbed my students of an authentic opportunity to tackle a real problem, one that was important and open to being solved in a variety of creative ways.

So often I hear teachers say things like, 'I'd like to use technology, but so often it doesn't work and I end up wasting a whole lesson. We just don't have that kind of time.' Or, during a lesson when something doesn't work, throwing up their hands in frustration and abandoning the lesson. I've balked at this in the past, becoming frustrated myself with the attitude of helplessness that is being demonstrated, often in front of students. And yet, when I look in the mirror, I've just done the same thing myself. While I might have a growth mindset when it comes to integrating technology in teaching and learning, I don't think I am doing a very good job in sharing this with others. Or more importantly, talking about why it is such a critical element of being a technologically literate person.

Image by Wesley Fryer on Moving at the Speed of Creativity CC-BY-2.0

If we want students to be creative and critical thinkers, capable of solving complex and challenging problems, we need to actually provide them opportunities to do this. We need to shift our perspective when things do not work as we had planned and seize these moments as opportunities for learning - real learning, not only for ourselves, but for our students. The next time I feel compelled to solve a technology 'problem' I am going to stop myself and hand it over to the students.

At the end of the day, it is true we might not cover all of the material we intended to with our students, but we need to value what they will learn instead. I'm quite confident that the content of the lesson I had planned is not nearly as important to my students as having them understand they are capable problem solvers and with perseverance can solve the challenges they encounter. It's those times when the technology doesn't work that you have the greatest opportunity for learning. Yes, it was super cool to have our art displayed in a virtual gallery, but at what cost.

Inquiry as a stance: revisiting ideas

“...inquiry is a collaborative process of connecting to and reaching beyond current understandings to explore tensions significant to learners.” ~Kathy Short

One of the first books I read about inquiry was Learning Together Through Inquiry. It was in a sense the book that propelled me to look more critically at what I was doing as an educator, which ultimately led me to the IB and teaching in an international school. So when I recently read, Taking the PYP Forward  I was excited to see that it was Kathy Short who had written the first chapter ~ quite fitting, I believe.

Inquiry as a stance on curriculum outlines the key features of the inquiry model developed by Short and Harste in 2002, addressing some of the common misconceptions about this ‘authoring cycle’ and clarifying what this model might look like in practice. Revisiting these ideas that are at the heart of inquiry practice has been a great reflective prompt for my own practice. 


It is natural (I would argue essential) that our practices change over time. As a PYP teacher, reflecting on teaching and learning is an integral part of the planning process, seeking to find ways to better facilitate student learning. As we attempt new approaches or concentrating on improving a particular aspect of our teaching, we often let go of practices that have become routine. But just because something has become routine doesn't necessarily mean it is an ineffective practice.

While reading Inquiry as a stance I found myself thinking, 'Oh, yeah - I used to do that' and wondering why I stopped. The best part about becoming more aware of what I am actually doing, or not doing, is that I can make small changes very quickly. I have found when I purposefully make such changes I am much more focused on the result or impact of the change and thus in a better position to reflect on my own practice. 


Reading this article reminded me of the importance of allowing time for learners to build on their conceptual understanding ~ not rushing to 'unpack a central idea' or make connections to the 'transdisciplinary theme'. While tuning in to our most recent unit of inquiry, I made sure we had opportunities to explore the concepts before making any connections to the theme, and all of this well before sharing the central idea. The students were so engaged and the connections they made to the unit once introduced were so strong, that the invitation to inquiry was a natural next step. 

Student created movie trailer exploring understanding of concept causation. Click here to see others.

Reflection is an essential practice for effective teaching and learning and we must make time for it. Unfortunately, this critical practice is often forgotten, or left until the end of a unit ~ a way to 'wrap-up' a planner. On-going reflection, focused and purposeful is a habit I must develop. I want my next 'Oh, yeah' moment to be 'Ah - that's why I do this!'