Animal Alarm

• Review the Animal Alarm lesson in the LEGO® Education SPIKE™ App.
• If necessary, pre-teach these related vocabulary words: alarm, cause, Color Sensor, creature, effect, and react.
• Consider the abilities and backgrounds of all your students. Differentiate the lesson to make it accessible to everyone. See the Differentiation section below for suggestions.
• If time allows, plan and facilitate the language arts extension. See the Extension section below for more information.

• Facilitate a quick discussion about cause and effect.
  • Talk with your students about what happens when an alarm (e.g., fire alarm, alarm clock, cell phone alert) goes off.
  • Ask questions, like: What would happen if you heard an alarm going off? What would you think is happening?
• Introduce your students to the story’s main characters and the first challenge: turn on the animal alarm.
• Distribute a brick set and a device to each group.

• Have your students use the LEGO® Education SPIKE™ App to guide them through their first challenge:
  • Make and try the program that turns on the alarm when a blue creature walks by the Color Sensor.
• Have your students iterate and test their models to complete the next challenge in the app:
  • Change the program to react when a red creature walks by.
• You can find coding support in the Tips section below.

• Gather your students together to reflect on their completed challenges.
• Ask questions, like: What happened when a blue creature walked by the alarm? How did you change the alarm to react when a red creature walked by?

• Prompt your students to discuss and reflect on cause and effect.
• Ask questions, like: Where do you see cause and effect happening around you? Why is it important to predict cause and effect?
• Have your students clean up their workstations.

• Ask guiding questions to encourage your students to “think aloud” and explain their thought processes and reasoning in the decisions they've made while building and programming.

Observation Checklist

• Measure your students’ proficiency in identifying cause and effect.
• Create a scale that matches your needs. For example:
  1. Needs additional support
  2. Can work independently
  3. Can teach others

Self-Assessment

• Have each student choose the brick that they feel best represents their performance.
  • Yellow: I think I can identify cause and effect.
  • Blue: I can identify cause and effect.
  • Green: I can identify cause and effect, and I can help a friend do it too.

Peer-Feedback

• In their small groups, have your students 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…

Coding Tip

• After your students complete their first challenge, they'll be provided with three Inspiration Coding Blocks to help them modify their programs.
• The Inspiration Coding Blocks are intended to spark their imaginations as they experiment to find their own solutions.

Simplify this lesson by:

• Reading the Animal Alarm story and instructions from the LEGO® Education SPIKE™ App aloud to your students
• Shortening the lesson to only include the first challenge

Increase the difficulty by:

• Changing the alarm to react differently when a yellow or green creature walks by the Color Sensor
• Clicking Show Full Palette in the app to utilize more Coding Blocks

• Have your students research and write about different nocturnal animals that could walk by Leo’s campsite.

If facilitated, this will extend beyond the 45-minute lesson.

Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.1.2