Education Standards
Lego Engineering Simple Machines
Overview
This lesson will give beginner Lego-builders a fun introduction to gears and how they function. If used in a classroom setting, there is also a video about the History of Lego and an activity for students to free-build the flag of Denmark in honor of the company's beginnings there.
Lesson One: Intro and Gears
On board: Engineer, drive gear, driven gear, idler gear, crown gear, spur gear, arrows as needed for models A1-A5
Items needed: can opener, construction paper, scissors, crayons/colored pencils, glue sticks, pencils, A books, copies of attached worksheet
*this lesson is designed so a student can complete it alone. However, if using it in a classroom setting, the following instructions are better suited.*
Talk about value of legos; biting, minifigs, etc.
Talk about what an engineer does. Talk about “fair test” principle.
Discuss our first concept – gears (show images for classroom use, introduce vocab., show real-life gear examples – can opener, clock) with “Things to Talk About” at top, point out vocab. : Gears Lesson
Group partners, have them bring box to table, strict instructions.* Lid doesn’t open till I say so. ALSO, they need to work together with their partner, even if they are not the one building!
Organize trays. ELEMENT SEPARATOR. Each person find one spur gear (why is it called this?), find one crown gear (why?), find one of your largest gears. Count teeth on each (see student worksheet). We’re going to see what difference the number of teeth makes in our gear models today.
Build models A1; raise hand when finished. Ask questions on p. 22 of worksheet, reminding about fair test principle. Keep answer to yourself!
Continue with A2-A5, asking questions of each.
Final gears questions: gears placed next to each other, or “meshing” go in the same direction, or different directions? (different) To gear up, or increase the speed of rotation of your gears, which of your gears needs to be larger? (drive gear) To gear down, or decrease the speed of rotation, which of your gears needs to be larger? (driven gear) What would be a reason you would want to slow something down? What does a crown gear allow us to do? (gear at an angle)
Build A6 (as kids are building, add questions to the board for A6/A7; continue with A7
BREAK!! Take merry-go-rounds apart, close boxes, return to large box
Next we’re going to begin our work as Lego Theoreticians (working with history of Lego and also with principles of legos and experimenting and discovering what we can with those principles).
Remind kids that even though with these legos they will use separate boxes, they are still under the same instructions to ONLY open the box when I say so, then allow them to get boxes and make Denmark flag out of legos.
For the remaining time, pass out Creationary Cards and have students choose one thing to build on the card. They should keep the card hidden from others and, depending on class size, have either teacher or other students guess what they’ve made. If guess is incorrect, look at card and guess. Build two things from same card before getting a new card.
Clean up and head home!
*1. No biting the legos. If you bite, you lose the ability to touch them…for the REST of class!
2. Figure out a way to get along with your partner. Take some ideas for how to do this. Take a few minutes for each set of partners to decide how they will manage their area.
3. How do you know you have the right piece? Many pieces are similar.
Learning Goals: learn about different types and sizes of Lego gears and how they work together in different ways; learn the terminology surrounding the simple machine "gear"
https://education.lego.com/en-us/lessons/sm/gears#construct
1. Open the link above in a new window.
2. Go through the Things to Talk About under the lesson heading.
3. Print off a copy of the attached worksheet for yourself and any partners with whom you're working.
4. Work through the worksheet, building your models according to the instructions on the above web lesson (the one you've opened in a new window).
Assessment: Student should build all five models in the lesson and answer items on the worksheet correctly.