First Trip

• Review this lesson plan and choose what you need from the Teacher Support box.

• If necessary, pre-teach these related vocabulary words: action brick, stop (as a noun), destination, most, train station, journey.

• Consider the abilities and backgrounds of all your students and decide when and how to introduce and differentiate lesson content, activities, or concepts.

• Ask the students if they’ve ever taken a train, subway, or tram. Where did they go?

• Tell them they’re going to play the choo choo train game!

• Have the students line up and put their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them.

• Explain that when you say, “go” they’ll move around the classroom like a choo choo train, and when you say, “red light” they’ll slow the train down and stop.

• Play a few rounds of the choo choo train game.

• Share printable model card 1 (image shown below) and have students build a model from it. Alternatively, they may use the Building Cards from the LEGO^® Education Coding Express set as inspiration or build any destination they like.

• When the students have finished building, ask them to work together to build a double-ended track.

• Make sure the track is long enough to fit the train station and the destination (using eight track pieces is recommended).

• Start at the train station and use a LEGO^® DUPLO^® figure as a passenger.

• Tell the students that the passenger would like to go fishing at the harbor. Can you help them get to the harbor?

Tip: The students don’t have to build what’s on the building cards. They can build any destination they’d like.

• The students are likely to stop the train one of three ways:

  • By hand, which they’ve learned in the getting started activities
  • Using the red action brick
  • Using the red stop brick

• Show the three different ways of stopping the train.

• Talk to the students about the red action bricks.

• Ask questions like:

  • How many red action bricks did you use?
  • Where did you place the red action brick(s) and why?
  • Where did the train stop?

• Encourage the students to build a longer track and to create more stops.

• Pique their interest in using the green action bricks on the track.

• Ask questions like:

  • What did you see when the train went over green bricks?
  • How can we help the train get back to the station?

• Ask guiding questions to elicit students’ thinking and their decisions while ideating, building, and programming.

Observation Checklist

• Review the learning objectives and educational standards addressed in this lesson (Teacher Support box).

• Share specific student responses and behaviors at different levels of mastery.

• Use the following checklist to observe students’ progress:

  • Students work in collaborative groups to build a model and the double-ended track and then take turns using their model as the destination.
  • Students create and follow an algorithm (step-by-step actions) for the train to move from the train station to one or more destinations along the track.
  • Students use the action bricks (or appropriate elements) to program the train to start at the train station and stop at the destination.