LEGO® Education is teaming up with NASA and the Artemis I Team to bring students and teachers an out-of-this-world STEAM Learning series! Build to Launch is an exploration of the technology, STEAM concepts and careers behind the Artemis I mission to the Moon. Teachers and students will join the all-new LEGO® Space Team and their Artemis I team counterparts for a 10-week interactive digital learning adventure. With each episode students will find themselves in the shoes of NASA engineers, scientists, and of course astronauts. Through open-ended lessons students will get hands-on and solve the same types of problems the Artemis I Team faces as they build towards launch!

The Build to Launch digital series provides 10 weeks of content that will be available on the LEGO® Education website and YouTube channel. This includes:

• 6 “Missions” in the form of open-ended prompts delivered through guided digital episodes featuring the LEGO® Space Team and NASA team members.
• 4 “Mission Briefings” including mini-missions designed to ignite and sustain discussion around the STEAM concepts being covered, a recap of the previous week’s mission, and the opportunity for student submitted questions to be answered by the LEGO Space Team or NASA team members.

In July participants will receive a downloadable teachers guide that includes:

• A series overview
• A Course Design Outline
• An explanation of the Design Thinking Approach
• A Design Engineering Rubrik
• Links to additional LEGO Education and NASA resources
• Tips for celebrating student work and differentiating for grade levels

The Build to Launch digital series provides 10 weeks of content that will be available on the LEGO® Education website and YouTube channel. The series is designed so teachers can implement at their own pace. The lessons can be completed as they are released each week or as appropriate within your curriculum and schedule.

The Build to Launch series is standards-based, meaning that it is designed to foster the same STEAM practices as many of the standards while ensuring that it’s relevant in any state or country that students might be participating from. Some of the STEAM practices covered include:

• Ask questions and define problems
• Plan and carry out investigations
• Develop and use models
• Meet design constraints
• Evaluate competing design solution
• Iteratively test and modify designs
• Communicate best fit solutions
• Explore cause and effects
• Investigate systems and system models
• Understand structure and function

Everyone! The Build to Launch series was designed with an open-ended format that allows for easy differentiation and adaptation across any grade level from K-12. The lessons can be implemented using LEGO Education sets or any products and materials found in classrooms such as paper, markers, etc. so that any classroom can participate.

The series features inspiration builds using our primary and early secondary solutions such as LEGO® Education BricQ Motion Essential and LEGO® Education SPIKE™ Prime. This allows for options that include tech integration as well as those that do not. However, LEGO Education solutions aren’t required in order to participate, the lessons and prompts were developed to be accessible using whatever materials students and teachers have available to them.

Participants who have opted-in to receive information about the series will be emailed the Teacher’s Guide in mid-July. The guide will also be available to download from our website. The digital series will kick-off on Tuesday, September 14 and will include an email with lesson PDFs and resources that will also be posted to the website. Once the series kicks off, new episodes will be released every Tuesday for the following nine weeks.

More details to come. We want to hear from your students and see their progress over the 10 weeks as they build towards launch!