WeDo Lego Inquiry Based Learning Update #5

Today the students built alligators.   Similar to the dancing birds, they used gears, pulleys, and belts.  But today the students were asked to add a motion sensor.   The students were challenged to include the sensor on their alligator structures and to add the sensor block to their computer program.

Most of the students had no difficulty building the alligators.   When it came to programming the software they felt much more challenged.   Several students thought that they had "done it" when they were able to get the mouth of the alligator to go up and down.   What they didn't realize was that they had missed the key component, the sensor block.   They had no problems getting the alligators mouth to move using loop blocks and the start key but it took much more critical thinking to get the motion sensor to activate the motions of the alligator.   Only one group accomplished the task!   We were very proud of how the students asked great questions, learned from each other and persevered.