Arts Integration: Lego Workshops for Teachers at Paterson Schools 9 and 12!

Simone Sandler, Art Professor-in-Residence PIR from WPU, held workshops for teachers at Paterson School #9 and School #12 on Legos. Twenty-nine teachers participated by experimenting with hands-on projects that could be easily integrated into their curricula.

If designed thoughtfully and intentionally, Lego blocks can be used to encourage students to create a visual concepts in math, science, literacy and engineering. Additionally, Legos foster spatial reasoning and allow students to learn while they play. 

Skills Lego develop :

1. Lego provides tools that develop lateral thinking in a fun environment
2. It teaches kids to think in three dimensions
3. It improves literacy as kids work with instructions
4. It develops problem-solving, organization, and planning by construction
5. It improves creativity
6. It enhances communication and critical thinking
7. It boosts kids motor development.  LINK 

Some of the concepts explored at the workshop with Lego blocks were: multiplication, division, fractions, illustrating a story, creating architecture, simple  machines, robotics and even coding with Legos. In learning to code with Lego students discovered the binary alphabet where each letter, both upper and lower case, is assigned a set of numbers containing 1’s and 0’s. This is an example showing that when students use hands-on learning they are more apt to retain the information presented to them.

 photo credit: David J. Morgan on Flickr