Due to COVID-19 school closures and distance teaching, hands-on learning for third graders across the nation meant holding an iPad, watching their teachers on screens or opening a pencil and paper packet.

As an environmental magnet school, and experiential learning is at the core of everything.

At our school we believe it is imperative for students to participate in scientific observation and data collection to complete hands-on projects that build reading, math, science and technology skills. While environmental experiential learning means spending a lot of time with nature, distance teaching has also required teachers to keep engagement high across digital screens, apps and our phones. Our students deserve unique experiences during these unique circumstances so they don’t have to just watch another video.

My Project

Lego WeDo 2.0 allows students to use their hands to build with Legos and use their school iPads to program with the Lego WeDo 2.0 set. Lego programming is highly engaging, meets our engineering standards and will allow kids to use these in or out of the classroom.

Students can feel empowered to build and program at home while collaborating with peers and their teachers over Google Meets during these unique learning circumstances due to COVID-19.

Past Lego WeDo sets required laptops and downloading software. Our students already are given an iPad to keep at home, and teachers have become Google Meet and distance learning experts. However, a huge downfall last spring was kids were tired of watching videos of their teachers or other teachers. Lego WeDo 2.0 will motivate and engage students to learn cross-curricular skills while building and programming Lego sets integrated into our curriculum while at home and then hopefully back at school!  If you are interested in helping match our current Donor’s Choose Fund, we are at $3,000 which provides 12 kids. We’d like to double that now that half our school is still at home. 12 kits isn’t enough for a class set and partnering out students isn’t possible right now.  Thank you so much for taking the time to read this.

Here is the link to the Donors Choose Site: https://www.donorschoose.org/project/lego-wedo-20-at-home/5268690/