Math - Distance

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

• If necessary, pre-teach these related vocabulary words: measure, distance, step, compare, vehicles, reverse.

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

• This lesson is designed to be used with the Coding Express app. Download the app for student devices at legoeducation.com/downloads.

• To use this lesson without the Coding Express app, see the unplugged version.

• Talk to the students about distance.

• Ask questions like:

  • How did you get to school today?
  • Why do you think some people walk or bike while others take the bus?
  • Would you like to play a game?

• Choose two or three spots around the classroom to be “train stops.”

• Name the stops.

• Ask the students to walk from one stop to the next and count how many steps they’ve walked.

• Compare the number of steps between each of the stops.

• Talk about which distance is longer and why.

• Have the students pick building cards and work together to build the models shown (three models are suggested).

• Ask them to build a double-ended track and place their models alongside it.

• Now experiment with the app.

• Let’s start the train!

• Ask the students how many numbers they’ve seen in the app. Can they count from the smallest number to the biggest?

• Press each number and see how far the train moves.

• Have the students pick the number(s) that will help the train reach each stop

Tip: Make sure the engine is connected to the app before experimenting with the different numbers.

• Talk to the students about distance.

• Ask questions like:

  • Why do people use different vehicles like bikes, cars, and airplanes?
  • When do people take airplanes or buses?
  • When do they walk or bike?

• Encourage the students to build more stops and decide the distance between them.

• Ask questions like:

  • Which distance is the shortest/longest between the stops and how long is it?
  • Can you describe the path of the train’s journey? (e.g., it started from…, stopped or passed…, and ended at…)

• 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 can create and describe a sequence of events.
  • Students can predict the expected outcome of the sequence of events, with prompting.
  • Students can compare two distances using descriptive words like longest, shortest.

• Use this lesson’s format to work with Longer Distances and explore more numbers with your kindergartners!