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The LEGO Education 4C Approach to Learning

Great LEGO Smart Activities

Facts about Dinosaurs and Mining

Pick-A-Book, and More!

WHAT’S INSIDE . . .

LEGO® Club In-School Edition

Teacher’s GuideFALL 2012 Junior Edition

LEGO EDUCATION TEACHER’S GUIDE

Dear LEGO® Smart Teacher,

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WTABLE OF CONTENTS

The LEGO® Way of Learning ..................... 2

Teacher Tidbit .............................3

Digging Up Bones ...........................3

Can You Dig It? ......3

Fun Facts ...................3

Pick-A-Book .............. 4

Let’s StayIn Touch ...................... 4

2

The 4C Approach

THE LEGO WAY OF LEARNINGA

e know children learn best when they’re truly

engaged, and LEGO Education hands-on activities help you create an engaging, interactive learning experience.

You’ll find a variety of hands-on activities in this special teacher’s guide and correlating LEGO Club In-School Magazine. We encourage you to engage your students through these activities that promote math, science, and language skills.

There are three types of activities included in this teacher’s guide.

LEGO Smart Activities use basic LEGO building knowledge and creative expression to teach students personal development skills such as team building and self-confidence.

These activities can be conducted using basic LEGO bricks; no special set is needed.

LEGO Club Extension Activities are suggestions of activities above and beyond the LEGO Club In-School Magazine. These activities extend the learning process and help students dive deeper into an activity or subject.

LEGO Education Activities are more in-depth activities using the LEGO Education 4C approach to learning. This approach is used in all LEGO Education teacher guides and consists of activities in which students Connect, Construct, Contemplate, and Continue. A more in-depth explanation of the 4C process is found in the following article.

Additionally, several classroom and teacher suggestions appear throughout the guide in our Teacher Tidbit columns.

These snippets of information are great ways to enhance learning, introduce new topics, and encourage classroom discussion.

We hope you enjoy your exclusive LEGO Education Teacher’s Guide and corresponding LEGO Club In-School Magazine.

Tell us your thoughts! We welcome any feedback on this Teacher’s Guide. Send any comments or suggestions to LEGOClub@LEGOeducation.us.

Enjoy!Your LEGO Education Team

Activities with Natural Flow

ctivity Packs from LEGO® Education are developed

by experienced educators and have a natural flow that engages and motivates students. We call it the 4C approach. It consists of four phases: Connect, Construct, Contemplate, and Continue.

ConnectIt is important to capture students’ interest in order to have a positive and motivating learning environment. LEGO Education activities always begin with an engaging

challenge introduced through real-life video clips, photos, stories, animations, etc., which students can relate to and find compelling.

ConstructStudents work in teams to solve an open-ended building task related to the challenge. They make their own solutions and plan, build, and test their models or software programs.

ContemplateIn this phase, students think about what they have just constructed and achieved. They discuss the project at

hand, reflect on and adapt their ideas, and teachers can encourage this process by asking questions.

ContinueExtension ideas are provided that present a new challenge within the same theme. Students are encouraged to change or add feature to their models, thereby leading them to a new Connect phase. This allows them to enter a positive learning spiral, in which they take on increasingly difficult challenges.

About LEGO® Education

LEGO Education delivers teacher-tested, classroom-ready solutions for engaging and inspiring young learners. LEGO education conbines the unique, inspiring qualities of LEGO brick with subject-sepecific tools and curricula so classroom teachers can meet key learning obkectives. It’s a LEGO way to teach!

Our education consultants can help suggest the right solution for your classroom. Call 800-362-4308.

Learn more at www.LEGOeducation.us.

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LEGO®Education ActivityDIGGING UP BONEST

TEACHER TIDBITDecorating the Classroom

Dino-Mite

Start with either a green background or a grass-printed fabric and then add dinosaur-bone letters to spell Dino-Mite. Display each student’s work with a cutout dinosaur.

Help-O-Saurus

Draw a large dinosaur shape on bulletin board paper. Then, make cracked-egg shapes with the job title on the top of the eggs and the helper’s name on the bottom of the eggs and place the eggs around the dinosaur.

Mining for Good Behavior

Draw the entrance to a mine on the bulletin board paper and then add a miner pushing a wheelbarrow out of the mine. Fill the wheelbarrow with the “diamonds” or “gold” with the students’ names. Students receive this for good behavior, or how the teacher sees fit. When the wheelbarrow is full, the students whose names are in the wheelbarrow will earn a treat.

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aleontologists search for fossil remains. Do you want to be a paleontologist?

ActivityStart by putting LEGO bricks of varying colors

and sizes into individual containers for each group of students. Download and print the various dinosaur skeleton pictures from www.LEGOeducation.us/LEGOclub. Cut apart the individual dinosaur bones and hide each in a different container of LEGO bricks.

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Each team will dig for the dinosaur bones. When all the bones have been removed, lay out all the bones and take a digital picture of them. Put the skeleton together and determine what kind of dinosaur has been unearthed.

DINOSAURS AND MININGF U N F A C T S

inosaurs roamed Earth long before people,

but today’s technology has helped uncover many of the mysteries regarding what dinosaurs might have looked like and how they might have lived. Read the cool facts below for more information about dinosaurs.

Dinosaur Facts

• The word dinosaur comes from the Greek language and means “terrible lizard.”

• A stegosaurus could grow to be 30 feet long and 14 feet tall and had a brain

the size of a Ping-Pong ball.

• A person who studies dinosaurs is known as a paleontologist.

• Pterodactyls were not dinosaurs; they were flying reptiles that lived during the age of dinosaurs.

In the United States, a wide variety of natural resources are mined including coal, gold, silver, copper, sand, gravel, clay, cement, lime, boron, iron ore, magnesium, marble, granite, salt, helium, sulfur, and many others.

Mining Facts • A television requires

35 different minerals; 40 minerals are used to make telephones; 15 minerals are needed to make a car.

• The United States has the world’s largest reserve of coal.

• Wyoming is the nation’s top coal-producing state.

• Salts are taken from the ground and purified and then end up on your kitchen table.

• All 50 states mine something.

• Diamond is the hardest mineral in nature.

• Diamonds can only be scratched by other diamonds.

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his activity encourages students to construct

a dinosaur with the LEGO® Education 4C approach to learning. To check out a wide array of LEGO Education curriculum foryour classroom visit www. LEGOeducation.us.

Connect:Danny and Dana are digging in their backyard when they find something huge, white, and hard. Dana and Danny start digging carefully to unearth the large object. When they are finished, they realize that it is an enormous dinosaur skull!

What kind of dinosaur is it?

Can you help Danny and Dana reconstruct the dinosaur?

Construct:Create a dinosaur using the LEGO Education Animals Set, LEGO Education LEGO brick set, or other LEGO bricks. You can design your own dinosaur, or follow the build instructions included with the Animals Set.

Contemplate: After building the model, do some research about your dinosaur.1. What is the dinosaur’s real name?

2. What did the dinosaur eat?3. Was it a predator?4. What was one of its identifying traits?

Continue: Use the research about your dinosaur to create a classroom presentation or story. Include your research, pictures or drawings of the dinosaur, and at least 10 facts about your dinosaur. Also, be sure to include a picture of your dino model. Try to use descriptive adjectives when possible!

LEGO Smart ActivityCAN YOU DIG IT?

what the world might have looked like once upon a time.

Fossils Tell of Long Ago by AlikiA fossil can be the imprint of an ancient leaf in a rock or a woolly mammoth frozen for thousands of years in the icy ground. Sometimes, it’s the skeleton of a stegosaurus that has turned to stone. A fossil is anything that has been preserved one way or another and tells about life on Earth. But you can make a fossil too – something to be discovered a million years from now – and this book will tell you how.

Tyrannosaurus Was a Beast by Jack Prelutsky and illustrated by Arnold Lobel A collection of humorous poems about dinosaurs with rollicking rhyme schemes and full-page portraits; the dinosaurs are rejuvenated once again to amuse and amaze their devoted fans.

P I C K - A - B O O KD i n o s a u r s

© 2012 The LEGO Group. LEGO, the LEGO logo, DUPLO, SOFT, and MINDSTORMS Education logos; the Brick and Knob configurations; and the Minifigure are trademarks of the LEGO Group.

BLET’S STAY IN TOUCH!

ecome a LEGO® Education Friend, Fan,

or Follower and stay in touch indefinitely!

• Read about the latest news, product updates, and training opportunities by adding LEGO Education to your following on Twitter (@LEGO_Education).

• Start a discussion, post a comment, or upload an image by joining the LEGO Education North America Facebook fan page.

• Enjoy product and classroom activity videos when you tune in to

the LEGO Education YouTube channel. (www.youtube.com/LEGOeducationUS)

Not only will we use these social networks to keep you updated about all of our initiatives with schools but we also want to ensure that you have a direct line to talk with us!

We want to hear about your robotics camp, see pictures of your class’s LEGO smart activities, and watch videos of your students’ latest accomplishments with LEGO Education sets!

So, come chat with us online! We can create together!

The LEGO Education Teacher’s Guide is developed in coordination with LEGO Club. Publication dates vary. Guide activity suggestions or story ideas are always welcome.

Please send all Teacher’s Guide correspondence to:

njoy reading and learning about

dinosaurs of all kinds. The following books are favorites suggested by our in-house curriculum team.

Digging up Dinosaurs written and illustrated by AlikiLong ago, dinosaurs ruled the Earth. Then suddenly, they died out. Today, teams of experts work together to dig dinosaur fossils out of the ground, bone by fragile bone. Digging up Dinosaurs briefly introduces various types of dinosaurs and explains how scientists find, preserve, and reassemble the giant dinosaur skeletons seen in museums.

The Magic School Bus in the Time of the Dinosaurs

(Magic School Bus Series) by Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen The classroom is decorated as Dinosaur Land, but Ms. Frizzle craves a more authentic experience. The Magic School Bus turns into a time machine and transports the class back millions of years to an adventure where they learn about dinosaurs.

National Geographic Kids Ultimate Dinopedia: The Most Complete Dinosaur Reference Ever by Don Lessem and Franco Tempesta (Illustrator)In the crowded field of dinosaur books, this is the very first to offer children ages seven to 10 – those at the height of their enthusiasm for

the prehistoric giants – complete coverage of all the known dinosaurs.The exciting result is an accessible, visually stunning book that’s packed with

facts that kids can use to impress their friends and families. Every featured dino gets a fact box that delivers important information at a glance. This book provides all the information an eight-year-old fact hound needs.

Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs by Byron BartonA long time ago, there were big and small dinosaurs, some with horns on their heads or spikes down their backs as well as others with long, long necks and long, long tails. Imaginatively, and with a masterful use of color, shape, and composition, Byron Barton brings to life his unique and endearing vision of

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LEGOclub@LEGOeducation.us.

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