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Hi Jose,
I use the Legos exercise to help my students to learn how to work together on problem solving, social interaction and global or big picture understanding.
I purchased the smallest set of Legos available. This way the students are not overwhelmed with all the pieces. I break the students up into work groups of 3-6 members depending on class size. Then I give the assignment out for the exercise. I have them construct a moving object that will incorporate all of the objects in the packet.(I put each Lego set into a zip lock bag). Five minutes into the exercise I tell them that we are going to race these objects when we are done. This causes all types of redesign efforts because the moving object is greatly different from a racing object. A few minutes later I tell them that we are also going to see how much weight the objects can carry. Again much discussion and redesign effort is done.
The idea behind the exercise is to be flexible, creative and cooperative while coming up with a viable solution to the challenge.
We then have races and a contest to see who built the "cutest" object, the "fastest", the most "functional", etc. You can create as many categories as you want. The groups get to show off their creations and also explain how they work and what the advantages of their object is over the others.
Note: When giving the work groups instructions throughout the exercise you can come up with any changes you want to make. I just listed two for you as an example. I try to read the work groups as to how they are doing and then add qualifications to what they are constructing to keep them a bit off balance and depending on each other for solutions.
Hope you have as much success with this activity as I have had.
Gary

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