Yesterday I was showing my teenaged half sister builds.vex.com and the whole list of GO builds. She was particularly interested in the Adaptation Claw and immediately set out to build it. Even though she had never seen a GO Kit before, she was grabbing pieces and had the claw built in no time!!
It was great to see a kid discovering the kit and how it all works together. So much excitement making the build and then I challenged her to some cup tower activities using only the Adaptation Claw!
Cant wait for her to come into the office next time and see what she chooses next from builds.vex.com. Maybe we can get her into some coding!
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That is one of my favorite “first builds” with the GO Kit! It’s a simple build that you can do so many fun activities with!
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Awesome! This would be a good discussion starter and intro into robotic prosthetics.
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@Alaina_Caulkett my students love Adaptation Claw. What I found was that similarly my students loved the real world applications - you can try it right away and see the claw work.
During the lesson, each group started thinking about what they could use the Adaptation Claw for in the classroom or at home. The students were also excited to break into groups so that they could work together each having their own job.
This challenge was hard for 3rd grade and I loved that. I had groups that finished and groups that struggled. Struggling in my classroom is GREAT. I wish my teachers in elementary school allowed me to struggle instead of showing me how to do everything at the first sign of trouble. I found that this was a GREAT lesson in frustration and understanding that this is just a part of learning. I had each group describe what worked and what didn’t. I found that many groups really understood each other once they heard some of the same troubleshooting experiences.
I highly recommend this lesson to coincide with a lesson on when things are hard what do we do? I think STEM goes hand in hand with problem solving and giving students the agency to be ok with feeling different emotions. I embrace the frustration as a way to get to the solution. I love hearing groups talk things through and cheer on group members to success. This is when I know a lesson went the way I wanted to. Adaptation Claw allowed me to hit all of those important themes in STEM and increase my students ability to problem solve. Highly recommend it!
Have you used this STEM Lab? How did it go?
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