LEGO® Education has developed a comprehensive range of STEAM products that encourage students of all ages to design and create. Their latest product, BricQ Motion, is designed for students at primary and lower secondary school year levels. This wonderful kit provides hands-on STEAM learning experiences for students to explore forces and motion and their interactions.
There are two different kits in the LEGO Education BricQ Motion range:
-
- LEGO Education BricQ Motion Essential – Foundation – Year 5
- LEGO Education BricQ Motion Prime – Year 5 – Year 8
Both of these kits provide students with templates/lessons that support the learning of STEAM concepts without the need for a device in hand. The kits are colour-coded, making it so much easier for students to locate the various LEGO pieces than ever before.
LEGO Education BricQ Motion Essential Kit
The BricQ Motion Essential Kit is a hands-on STEAM solution for early years students. This kit allows students to explore physical science and experiment and create to bring it to life. The science concepts that this set covers include:
-
- push and pull
- forces and friction
- energy and motion
Set includes:
-
- 523 LEGO elements
- storage box and sorting trays
- two building instructions booklets
- Book 1 aimed at students from Foundation-Year 2
- Book 2 aimed at students from Year 3-5
LEGO Education BricQ Motion Prime Kit
The BricQ Morion Prime Kit challenges students in Year 5-8 to apply scientific inquiry skills while inspiring them to deepen their understanding of forces, motion and energy.
Science concepts that this set covers include:
-
- Newton’s law of motion
- forces and friction
- energy and motion
- scientific inquiry
Set includes:
-
- 562 LEGO elements
- building instruction booklet
- storage box and sorting trays
To support teachers to get the most from these kits along with all other LEGO products, teachers can find detailed lesson plans on the LEGO Education website that include video tutorials and templates as well as additional challenges for students to explore, all linked to the curriculum. https://education.lego.com/
There are currently two curriculum units available for the BricQ Motions kits on the LEGO Education website that are designed for teachers to follow to support students in developing key curriculum learning outcomes.
Each curriculum unit contains:
-
- seven to eight lessons of 45 minutes each
- 30 minutes of literacy and maths extension activities for each lesson
- six to ten hours of educational content
Curriculum Unit: Train to Win (Years F – 2)
The ‘Train to Win’ curriculum unit explores the concepts of forces and motion. Students explore a range of investigations about the cause and effect of push and pull forces.
Curriculum Unit: Winning with Science (Year 3-6)
The ‘Winning with Science’ curriculum unit explores the concepts of forces and motions with a focus on the effects of balanced and unbalanced forces. Students investigate the patterns within an object’s motions and begin to predict and determine its future motion.
Lesson Ideas:
Whenever I introduce a new resource into the classroom, I believe it is important to allow students time to explore and engage with the resource to gather an understanding of what it can achieve.
The great thing about the LEGO Education kits is that the possibilities are truly endless. Teachers can choose to follow the lesson guides provided or allow students the opportunity to create their own masterpieces to suit their learning experience.
When introducing the LEGO Education BricQ Motion set, I had students work in pairs to recreate one of the creations within the lesson guides. When students completed their design, they each shared their creations with another group. Once students have the understanding of how the BricQ set works and the various elements provided within the kit, I can confidently provide students with challenges aligned to our units of work, where they can use the lesson guides as a starting point and then adapt and change where needed to design their own creation.
Below are some lesson ideas to engage your students with the LEGO Education BricQ Motion sets.
LEGO Education Mini Olympics
With the Olympics planned to go ahead this year, students can recreate many of the events using BricQ Motion. Students can explore and create the different science concepts whilst having fun and competing in various Olympic events. Teachers can connect learning to not only the science curriculum but also the mathematics curriculum by creating tallies and totals of the results for each event.
Events to include in your mini Olympics:
Rally Racing:
*Refer to the Gravity Car Derby lesson on the LEGO Education website as a guide for students to use and adapt.
-
- Design a car to race against others.
- Students can create a variety of prototypes, testing wheel sizes, number of lego pieces etc to create the fastest moving car.
- Race the cars on a flat surface or alternatively create a small ramp and see which car travels the furthest.
Sailing Cars
*Refer to the Sailing Car lesson on the LEGO Education website.
-
- Students create their own Sailing Car.
- Explore what type of sail they would like to use ie paper thickness, sail size
- Race the Sailing Cars to see whose Sail Car travels the furthest.
ShotPut Throw:
* Refer to the Free Throw Catapult lesson on the LEGO Education website
-
- Students create a prototype to project a ball the furthest.
- Place small balls into the catapult to see how far their shot-put (small ball) travels.
Various Challenges:
The LEGO Education BricQ Motion kits provide many open-ended challenges for students to complete. These can be connected to the units of work you cover throughout the year.
Here are some challenges you might want to try with your students:
-
- Design a playground that shows different types of forces.
- Create something with a pulley function.
- Create a car of the future.
- Create an obstacle course.
How will you use LEGO® Education BricQ Motion in your classroom? We’d love to hear from you!
About the author
Eleni Kyritsis is an award-winning Year 3 teacher and Leader of Curriculum and innovation from Melbourne, Australia. Eleni facilitates professional learning workshops around the world that focus on unleashing creativity and curiosity in classrooms. You can contact her at elenikyritis.com and @misskyritsis