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.
Enterprise FabLab use LEGO and other building materials as a means of prototyping and creating various projects, particularly in the areas of robotics and engineering.
FLL was particularly helpful in FabLabs as it is a versatile and widely available building material that can be used to quickly create and prototype ideas. We launch the First LEGO League as a great tool for teaching programming and coding in the schools and allows for the creation of robots that can be programmed to perform various tasks.
The impact of FLL in the schools that we partnered was significant. By providing a fun and engaging platform for learning, they increased interest in STEM subjects in their students. Additionally, the collaborative nature of FabLabs fostered a sense of community and encourage the exchange of knowledge and skills. By promoting creativity, problem-solving, and collaboration, FIRST LEGO LEAGUE and Enterprise FabLab helped to create a more innovative and connected community.
STEAM Education & outreach is fundamental to the FabLab project and seeks to invite, young and old, to explore, engage and upskill in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths. By involving people as early as possible in STEAM we can inspire future generations to develop the competences needed to thrive and shape our ever-changing world and to spark excitement and enthusiasm in STEAM careers in the North East.
Looking forward to developing the Action plan for 2022 / 2023