Teaching maths using LEGO®
Post date: Mar 13, 2014 11:52:46 PM
It's all LEGO, LEGO, LEGO 'round my house at the moment!
What with all the LEGO sets bought as presents for my youngest's recent birthday, a visit to the LEGO movie at the weekend and my children driving me mad with continuous renditions of "Everything is Awesome..." (you'll know what I'm talking about if you've seen the movie!) it's hard to get away from all things LEGO.
It got me thinking about the potential for using LEGO in school. Obviously, when used as a construction toy, it can be incorporated into the Visual Arts (construction), Science (design and make), and has huge potential to develop children's spatial awareness in Maths.
In the infant classes, it could be used for sorting, classifying, matching, ordering etc, as well as basic counting and numeration. It could be a great advantage when teaching the difference between area and perimeter (see picture opposite) e.g. using a base piece, cover it in other pieces to show the area and compare this to making a wall all around the edge of the base piece to show the perimeter.
But could it be used meaningfully in other strand units in the senior classes e.g. Number?
The first idea I came up with was how useful they would be for demonstrating multiplication arrays in 3rd and 4th class. I have found that it can be quite time consuming laying out multiple rows of counters or cubes in order to demonstrate arrays, whereas the LEGO blocks come ready available in various lengths with different numbers of studs (the official name given to the raised circular parts). Using the blocks in such a way also helps the children see the relationships and connections between the various factors (e.g. 48 = 6 blocks of 8, 3 blocks of 16, 4 blocks of 12, 8 blocks of 6) and see how Factor 1 x Factor 2 = Half Factor 1 x double Factor 2 (ie 4x12 = 8x6).
Another way LEGO could be used is to introduce prime and composite numbers. If you had a selection of LEGO blocks, the children could be firstly asked to sort them into groups according to the number of studs; they could then be asked to discuss the similarities and differences they noticed between the pieces. Through discussion, they should realise that some pieces have the same number of studs, but are different shapes (ie the composite numbers), and that other numbers only come in one shape (ie prime numbers), although you can rotate them to change their look. In this way, we can also recognise how the number 1 is neither prime nor composite since it's only available in one shape and its look doesn't change, even when rotated.
I went looking for other ideas on the net, and thought these two below had the most useful suggestions, including fractions, part-whole thinking, mean, median etc as well as the multiplication arrays.
Using LEGO to build math concepts
Building Understanding of Fractions with LEGO Bricks: an article from "Teaching Children Mathematics", a publication from the NCTM
So have you ever used LEGO as part of a maths class? Please share your ideas by posting a comment on my Facebook page