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 DUPLO® Six Bricks to continue learning at home with parents and carers.
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 IET Teacher Resources webpage, including image banks to use within sessions, session and training videos, and curriculum grids.
You can sign up here, and if you're in a location with funding, complete the 30 Day Challenge to get grant funding to cover all the costs associated with delivering the programme in your school. The team at Learnit (Ireland) or the IET (UK) 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 DUPLO® Six Bricks to continue learning at home with parents and carers.
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 IET Teacher Resources webpage, including image banks to use within sessions, session and training videos, and curriculum grids.
You can sign up here, and if you're in a location with funding, complete the 30 Day Challenge to get grant funding to cover all the costs associated with delivering the programme in your school. The team at Learnit (Ireland) or the IET (UK) will support you through the process.
I cannot praise this project enough for the benefits it's hard on the pupils in my class. They've not only had a huge amount of fun, but they've learnt so many transferrable skills throughout this project ie creativity, a sense of achievement, resilience, problem-solving skills, collaboration and communication work. I have one little girl who doesn't interact with other children very well, but she was excited in the last session and kept telling me 'Look miss, I'm doing teamwork!' Nearly every child was engrossed in each session and they were very proud to show off their final designs (see attached photos) but was sad to see the project come to an end.
It's also covered aspects from all of 'Four purposes' of the new curriculum.
I found the 'Six Bricks' a brilliant way to engage the children and helped enormously with 'attention a listening skills'. I will definitely continue to use these next year.
I'd like to thank you for providing the funding for this fantastic project and would love to be part of a Lego League project in the future. Many thanks, Mrs E.James-Pincott
Lego League – Little Dragon’s Action Plan 2020
How the funding will be used:
The funding will be used to purchase the Lego needed for the project.
COVID-19 safety plan:
• Children will remain in their class ‘bubbles’ when using the Lego.
• Children will wash hands before and after using the Lego.
• Children will use hand sanitizer before and after use.
• If home Lego is returned to school, it will be isolated for 72hours (recommendation from CLEAPPS).
• Lego will be washed with soap after every session and sprayed with anti-bacterial spray.
• Lego will be stored in isolation between uses.
School and Community Benefits:
Working in a socially deprived area, this is going to have a big impact on the wellbeing of both or children and staff in these unprecedented times.
This thrilling project is going to be an excellent way for children to engage in a broader curriculum in line with the Donaldson review where creativity can be allowed to thrive to produce ambitious and creative contributors.
My aim is that this exciting project will help develop teamwork, literacy, and numeracy skills - supporting the Curriculum for Wales 2020.
Through teamwork it will help the children develop their social skills by expressing themselves in a different way.
It will provide an opportunity to showcase their skills whilst developing vast range of wider skills in a fun and interactive way.
For my class, it is our aim to help pupils develop the following skills:
• Attitude : Develop motivation to achieve goals.
• Creativity: Generating ideas, solving problems, and creating opportunities. Designing for a purpose.
• Relationships: Expressing views and ideas, appreciating others’ viewpoints, and working co-operatively.
• Collaboration: Work in teams to share ideas and resources. Respect each other’s ideas and begin to develop early leadership skills.
• Communication: Be able to both share ideas (verbally or written) and listen to other’s ideas. Begin to give an opinion of likes/dislikes. Begin to communicate effectively with peers, familiar adults and with a wider audience.
• Organisation : Ability to make decisions and fulfill objectives.
• Resilience : Building resilience to set themselves goals and be able to accept failure and persevere to achieve final goal.
• Ambition : Develop enthusiasm and determination to achieve the desired goal.
• ICT : Use ICT to Share their project with the wider community. Film the stages and development of the project. Possibly, use ‘Into Film Cymru’ to produce a short film of their project.
• Literacy Skills : Develop vocabulary and improve oracy skills.
• Numeracy Skills : Develop shape and measures.
Here are the final designs. You can see all our photos from our weekly sessions on our Twitter page @bawelclass2