The Programme
FIRST LEGO League shows young people what it means to be an engineer and work with STEM skills and subjects, but focuses on practical, hand-on learning, so they are doing, not watching. FIRST® LEGO® League Discover is designed for 4-6-year-olds and develops children’s STEM skills from an early age. Delivered in school by the class teacher, children work in groups of four to explore a real-world theme with an exclusive LEGO® Discover model. Using this model as a starting point, they design and build new models of their own with LEGO® STEAM park bricks. Working through a series of tasks and challenges, the programme finishes with a Celebration Event to recognise the children’s achievements.
As they work, they develop valuable habits of learning, such as persisting with tasks and applying previous knowledge to new situations. Throughout their experience, teams operate under the FIRST® LEGO® League Core Values, celebrating discovery and teamwork, all while having fun! Skills are also developed at home with the Discover More set – a take-home resource consisting of two sets of Six Bricks to continue learning at home with parents and caretakers.
Children get the chance to showcase their learning journey at the end of the programme with a Celebration Event, which involves building, a special challenge and talking about what they have learnt with parents and other adults. Their hard work and perseverance are celebrated with a certificate and lots of high fives!
What you can do
Teachers are fully supported with comprehensive resources available to download on the FLL webpage, including image banks to use within sessions, session and training videos, and curriculum grids.
You can sign up here, complete the 30 Day Challenge to cover all the costs associated with delivering the program in your school and the team at FLL will support you through the process.
The Programme
FIRST LEGO League shows young people what it means to be an engineer and work with STEM skills and subjects, but focuses on practical, hand-on learning, so they are doing, not watching. FIRST® LEGO® League Discover is designed for 4-6-year-olds and develops children’s STEM skills from an early age. Delivered in school by the class teacher, children work in groups of four to explore a real-world theme with an exclusive LEGO® Discover model. Using this model as a starting point, they design and build new models of their own with LEGO® STEAM park bricks. Working through a series of tasks and challenges, the programme finishes with a Celebration Event to recognise the children’s achievements.
As they work, they develop valuable habits of learning, such as persisting with tasks and applying previous knowledge to new situations. Throughout their experience, teams operate under the FIRST® LEGO® League Core Values, celebrating discovery and teamwork, all while having fun! Skills are also developed at home with the Discover More set – a take-home resource consisting of two sets of Six Bricks to continue learning at home with parents and caretakers.
Children get the chance to showcase their learning journey at the end of the programme with a Celebration Event, which involves building, a special challenge and talking about what they have learnt with parents and other adults. Their hard work and perseverance are celebrated with a certificate and lots of high fives!
What you can do
Teachers are fully supported with comprehensive resources available to download on the FLL webpage, including image banks to use within sessions, session and training videos, and curriculum grids.
You can sign up here, complete the 30 Day Challenge to cover all the costs associated with delivering the program in your school and the team at FLL will support you through the process.
The funding from Change X allowed us to purchase STEAM Park Lego sets for each of our preschool classrooms and our primary STEAM lab. These sets engage over 150 students each week.
With our STEAM Park Lego Sets, our primary aged students have access to investigating and applying science and math concepts in a real context. This set pushes their creativity, encourages problem solving, and generates communication in ways that capture their attention and keep them engaged in learning. The alignment of the challenges to the NGSS ensures that our students are working towards mastery of foundational science concepts that are needed for future success, and build on their natural curiosity for the world around them.
We plan on hosting a family engagement night, where families will be able to share this experience with their students by learning through intentional play.
We love our STEAM Park sets!
Chase Elementary School is home to roughly 400 PreK through 8th grade students. We are a STEAM and Dual-Language school located centrally in Chicago, Illinois with a very diverse student population. We currently have an after school FLL team for our Middle School students but we are excited to bring FLL to our younger students with this ChangeX opportunity.
We will be using our seed funding to purchase the FLL Discover Kits, the Lego STEAM Parks, and the Discover More sets (for students to take home and continue their learning). If there are funds remaining, each team member will get a team Lego t-shirt. Our goal is to host this group during our instructional hours to increase the engagement of our student population.
Our COVID-19 safety plan includes meeting virtually (if need be), using our Google Classroom as a means of communicating ideas to families, and always wearing our masks in shared spaces.
Woohoo! 1...2...3... Le...GO!