We have done it! We have started an after school Lego Robotics club for my son’s 5th grade class. I’ve been having great fun organizing and preparing for it. (What a great excuse to play with Legos that move, right?) This is brand new to the school and brand new to me too-- if you don't count me being an engineer and that I spent years of my life building with the things as a child. Even so, it was a bit daunting deciding how to go about doing this. I've talked with a couple of people who have lead First Lego League teams and have found tons of information on the web-- so much and in so many forms that it was hard to digest it all. We have no official curriculum that I have found that fits our needs, so I'm taking bits and pieces of what is out there and making it work for us.
I'm writing this to document the process, so that (1) I can pass on our knowledge and experience to the person who takes over the club next year (I'm hoping to start a First Lego League team next year with some of the graduates) and (2) to add my experiences to the web for any other would-be club developers out there.
I've been prepping for this all summer and wish I started writing earlier, as we already had our first club meeting this afternoon. It was a great success, I would say (even though neither of the groups quite passed the design challenge successfully), but more on that in another post. First, here are the rough stats about the club:
Myself and a colleague are running it. We have ten 5th graders (including my son and my colleague's daughter) in the club. With two NXT sets to work with, that's 5 kids per group. We are meeting after school, every other Wednesday. (I wish it was every Wednesday, but we thought that would be hard to swing with our work schedules.) The club lasts for an hour and a half and we are planning to run through the whole school year.
Each group uses the retail version NXT set plus the education resource set. I love that resource set--- it adds so many cool elements. It also comes with some nice storage bins. We added two more tackle boxes to store the rest of the gear for each set, resulting in a compact but well organized package of raw creative excitement!
Each group uses the retail version NXT set plus the education resource set. I love that resource set--- it adds so many cool elements. It also comes with some nice storage bins. We added two more tackle boxes to store the rest of the gear for each set, resulting in a compact but well organized package of raw creative excitement!
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