Train Sound

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

• If necessary, pre-teach these related vocabulary words: approach, refill, gas station, react, describe.

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

• Coding Concept: Sequencing – the order in which commands are executed by a computer.

• Ask the students if they’ve ever been to a train station.

• Talk with the students about what they might’ve seen.

• Ask questions like:

  • How did you know when a train was approaching? (Trains make a steam whistle sound to warn people that they’re approaching.)
  • What made the trains move? (Trains use different sources of energy to move, such as wood, electricity, gas, etc.)

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

• Have the students line up and put their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them, just like they did last time.

• Explain that when you say, “yellow light” they’ll make a “choo choo” sound and walk around the classroom.

• When you say, “blue light” it means the train needs gas; they should stop and make a “bloop bloop” sound to refill train with gas.

Tip: If the students are ready for a challenge, make the game more difficult by adding the red and green actions from the choo choo train game you played in the previous beginner lesson.

• Share printable model Card 1 (shown below) and have students build a model from it (e.g., picnic area, gas station, train). 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 (using eight track pieces is recommended).

• Let’s start the train! Use some LEGO® DUPLO® figures as passengers.

• Tell the students that the passengers would like to go from the picnic area to the gas station. Can you help them get to the gas station?

• Talk to the students about the action bricks.

• Ask questions like:

  • Where did you place the blue action brick(s) and why?
  • Where did you place the yellow action brick(s) and why? (Try to tie this back to Engage discussion; a steam whistle sound is a warning.)
  • Can you describe the train’s journey? (i.e., the train started from…. and passed… and stopped at…)

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

• Pique their interest in using all of the action bricks in appropriate places.

• Ask questions like:

  • What happened when the train went over the white brick?
  • Think about how you placed the action bricks and models along the track. Can you describe the train’s journey?

• The white action brick turns the train’s light on and off. Print out the tunnel image and position it over the track (see sidebar for an example).

• Place the white action bricks on both sides of the tunnel and ask the students to observe what happens when the train goes through the tunnel.

• 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 use the building cards to sort the elements from the Coding Express kit into categories that represent the destinations.
  • Students can express why they believe those objects belong in that destination.
  • Students can decompose, or break down into steps, the journey a train makes that includes multiple stops and multiple action bricks.