SPIKE™ Essential

The Most Amazing Amusement Park

It’s time to create your very own amusement park ride!

45-90 min.
Beginner
Years 1-2
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Prepare

NOTE: This lesson will extend over two 45-minute class sessions.

  • Review the Most Amazing Amusement Park lesson in the LEGO® Education SPIKE App.
  • Consider the abilities and backgrounds of all your pupils. Differentiate the lesson to make it accessible to everyone. Please refer to the Differentiation section below for suggestions on how to do this.
  • If time permits, plan and facilitate the language arts extension. Please refer to the Extension section below for more information.

PART A (45 Minutes)

Engage

(Whole Class, 10 Minutes)

  • Facilitate a quick discussion about designing something new.
    • Talk with your pupils about what they think is missing from the amusement park that Sofie, Maria, Daniel and Leo have been visiting.
    • Ask questions like these: What would be a fun ride for the team to try? How could we brainstorm a new ride for the team?
  • Introduce your pupils to the team and the challenge: brainstorming a new ride for the amusement park.
  • Distribute a brick set, any additional brainstorming materials and a device to each group.

Explore

(Small Groups, 25 Minutes)

  • Have your pupils use the LEGO® Education SPIKE App to guide them through their first challenge:
    • Create a new ride for the amusement park. Use at least one motor or sensor (i.e. Colour Sensor or Light).
  • Your pupils can brainstorm using the LEGO bricks supplemented with additional materials. Encourage them to think of multiple solutions.

Explain

(Whole Class, 10 Minutes)

  • Facilitate a sharing session where your pupils present their initial ideas and provide feedback and suggestions to their peers.

PART B (45 Minutes)

Elaborate

(Small Groups, 30 Minutes)

  • Have your pupils build, program and test the prototypes and ideas that they came up with during the brainstorming session in Part A of this lesson.
  • Remind them to use at least one motor or sensor.
  • Encourage them to test and refine their models and programs over 2-3 iterations.
  • You can find coding and building help in the Tips section below.

Evaluate

(Whole Class, 15 Minutes)

  • Ask guiding questions to encourage your pupils to ‘think aloud’ and explain their thought processes and reasoning in the decisions they’ve made while building and programming their models.
  • Have your pupils tidy up their workstations.

Observation Checklist

  • Measure your pupils’ proficiency in applying their engineering design skills to completing the given task.
  • Establish a scale that suits your needs. For example:
    1. Requires additional support
    2. Can work independently
    3. Can teach others

Self-Assessment
Have each pupil choose the brick that they feel best represents their performance.

  • Yellow: I think that I can design, build and program a solution.
  • Blue: I can design, build and program a solution.
  • Green: I can design, build and program a solution, and I can also
    help a friend to do it.

Peer Feedback

  • In their small groups, have your pupils discuss their experiences working together.
  • Encourage them to use statements like these:
    • I liked it when you…
    • I'd like to hear more about how you…

Tips

Coding Tips

  • There are no coding instructions or Inspiration Coding Blocks for this lesson.
    • Encourage your pupils to experiment and find their own solutions.

Model Tip

  • There are no building instructions or Inspiration Images for this lesson.
    • Encourage your pupils to create their own models.
    • If they require further guidance, refer them to the building instructions for previous lessons in this unit.
  • There is no right or wrong model for this lesson.
    • Your pupils can create entirely new models, find inspiration in the models from previous lessons or simply recreate models from earlier lessons.

Differentiation

Simplify this lesson by:

  • Working together as a class to brainstorm new ideas for the amusement park
  • Giving your pupils the building instructions from previous lessons to use as inspiration for their new rides

Increase the difficulty by:

  • Using two motors or sensors
  • Creating two unique programs to make the ride move in two different ways

Extension

  • Have your pupils write a description of their amusement park rides, explaining why they're fun and exciting.

If facilitated, this will extend beyond the 90-minute lesson.

Language Arts: National Curriculum English En2/3.3a Develop positive attitudes towards and stamina for writing by:
writing narratives about personal experiences and those of others (real and fictional)
writing about real events
writing poetry
writing for different purposes

Teacher Support

The pupils will:

  • Apply their engineering design skills to solve a problem
  • Practise helping a story character
  • Describe key ideas or details from a text

(one for every two pupils)

  • LEGO® Education SPIKETM Essential Set
  • Device with the LEGO® Education SPIKE App installed
  • OPTIONAL: Additional materials for brainstorming (e.g. notebook paper, science notebook, etc.)

National Curriculum

Design and Technology
DT1/1.1a

  • design purposeful, functional, appealing products for themselves and other users based on design criteria
    DT1/1.1b
  • generate, develop, model and communicate their ideas through talking, drawing, templates, mock-ups and, where appropriate, information and communication technology

English
En2/1g

  • use spoken language to develop understanding through speculating, hypothesising, imagining and exploring ideas
    En2/2.2d
  • explain and discuss their understanding of books, poems and other material, both those that they listen to and those that they read for themselves.
    En2/3.3a
  • develop positive attitudes towards and stamina for writing by:
  • writing narratives about personal experiences and those of others (real and fictional)
  • writing about real events
  • writing poetry
  • writing for different purposes

Pupil Material

Student Worksheet

Download, view or share as an online HTML page or a printable PDF.