Teaching science concepts like force and motion is a part of many of our elementary classrooms. It can be tricky trying to continually come up with interesting ways to teach these concepts to our students. With VEX GO, the ideating and preparation is done for you, so all you have to do is facilitate fun, hands-on, engaging lessons using your VEX GO Kits! Let’s walk through what meeting force and motion standards in a VEX GO Science Class could look like…

The Inclined Plane STEM Lab within the Simple Machines STEM Lab Unit is a fantastic way to teach and explore these concepts in a hands-on and fun way! The goal of this Lab is for students to use the Inclined Plane build to learn about how an unbalanced force, like gravity on an inclined plane, causes an object to move. They will take part in explorations where the movement of the wheel down the plane is observed and measured, and that information is used to predict future motion.

With their Inclined Planes constructed, students are ready to test it out! They first make predictions about how the height of the ramp will affect the movement of the Blue Wheel when it is rolled down the plane. Then it’s testing time – roll the wheel down the plane, measure how far it travels, and record the data. Throughout the Lab, students discuss the reasoning behind their predictions, how accurate their measurements are, the cause and effect relationships they observe, and the ways in which the force of gravity and the height of the plane affect the wheel’s motion.

While this Lab helps us meet the standards above, there can be more incorporated into the experience to make that learning even more impactful.

For students to build the Inclined Plane from build instructions they use growing motor skills to manipulate and connect VEX GO pieces, and practice spatial skills to follow the images in the build instructions and create the build.

If your students are struggling with building from build instructions, there are a few things you can do to help build their capacity to make building go more smoothly. Students often come to our classrooms with vastly different background knowledge and experiences, particularly when it comes to hands-on activities like building. By helping students to grow their skills around construction and spatial reasoning, we can help everyone to have positive first experiences with VEX GO, paving the way to positive perceptions of themselves as builders and STEM learners.

• Build up to build instructions - Beginning with simpler building activities ensures that all students have a foundation of how pieces in the GO Kit function and connect to one another. It is always recommended to start this way, not only so that you can get a sense of students’ building levels, but also to support positive building experiences from the start.

• Check out the 3D Build Instructions - many VEX GO builds have 3D build instructions, where you and your students can rotate, zoom, and manipulate the image in each step in order to see and follow it more clearly.

Students are also working through science and engineering practices as they learn about how to carry out comparative and fair tests, observe and record accurate data, and draw conclusions from their observations and results. To extend this even further, and incorporate additional engineering skills, have students iterate on their Inclined Plane build to try to make the Blue Wheels travel even further. Posing the question of How can we change our build to make the wheels travel further? gives students an opportunity to think about and apply what they have observed and learned, to try to create an improved build. You may want to set a goal of a particular distance, to add specific criteria, or limit the number of pieces they can use, to set some constraints.

Students can use the Engineering Design Process Organizer to help them plan and process this challenge. Encourage students to share their iterations with others, and to learn from and with other groups as they engage in testing their builds. It could even become a classroom competition to see which build makes the wheel travel furthest!

This kind of creative extension will help you to assess how well students are understanding the connection between unbalanced forces of gravity on an object’s motion, while engaging students in a hands-on challenge that combines science, engineering, and math with design, iteration, and collaboration.

If you wanted to engage with the Inclined Plane build over a series of Science classes, here’s an example of what this could look like in your classroom:

This sequence is just one example of how you can engage students in a hands-on, engaging exploration of science concepts, while incorporating engineering, math, collaboration and problem-solving. This is a Google doc of that plan, so you can make a copy and edit it however you need to for your students in your setting.

Tell us more about how you are using VEX GO to teach Science in hands-on ways in your classroom in the PD+ Community. If you’d like to talk about lesson planning with VEX GO, like the example shown here, schedule a 1-on-1 Session and we can walk through planning together.