Learning with LEGO

Our school is a small community in the southern suburbs of Adelaide. Over the past few years, we have been developing strategies to help improve our student learning and engagement. One of these strategies is to encourage our students to be curious - to question and be inquisitive about their learning. Another strategy is to use creativity to explore different approaches to the way they solve problems.
When we saw LEGO available through the Good360 website, we thought that this would be a great opportunity to utilise the fun aspect of building with LEGO to scaffold our student's learning about curiosity and creativity.
Initially, we had groups of our lower primary students build the sets according to the instructions. It was great seeing them work together to make sure they were following the instructions correctly.
Once a couple of sets had been completed we then asked the question
"Is this the only thing you can build with this LEGO set?"
We were surprised a lot of students answered "Yes". When asked why they had come to that answer we got responses such as:
"Because that's what the picture is on the box" - Steven (8)
"That's what the instructions say" - Wade (9)
After hearing their reasoning, we asked
"What if we took the instructions away? Is it possible to build with the LEGO without the instructions?"
The students agreed they could build without using the instructions. So we then gave them time to build whatever they wanted.
Thank you Good360 and LEGO