NXT Amusement Park – Lopez-Benitez + Murray

Name of Unit

NXT Amusement Park Unit

Author(s)

Leticia Lopez-Benitez + Polly Murray

School

International School of Boston (ISB)

Teacher

Lizzy Mayer + Fred Bolzan

Brief Description

This semester, students will build and program sturdy structures and learn how to use sensors through NXT kits and LEGO Mindstorms. Each group will build one part of the final project: an amusement park. Through this, we will emphasize the engineering design process.

Grade(s)

6th-8th

Keywords

NXTs, Amusement Park, Middle School

Number of Weeks

9

Week 1

• Spaghetti Towers
• Students continued to work on their car structures
• Introduction to programming in Mindstorms

Week 2

• Review of Mindstorms userface
• Completion of the three programming challenges from prior week
• Introduce new challenge: move car as close to line as possible without sensors (use time, power, etc)
• Debrief before 3 week hiatus

Week 3

• Introduce sensors
• Brainstorm various uses of sensors
• Programming challenge with sensors (TBD)

Week 4

• Introduce amusement park class goal
• Presentation: types of Engineering needed for park, Engineering design process
• Brainstorm types of rides, robots possible

Week 5

• Begin work on amusement park ride
• Research types of rides

Week 6

• Continue work on ride
• Brainstorm solutions to design criteria

Week 7

• Continue work on ride
• Build and test

Week 8

• Finish work on ride
• Evaluate

Week 9

• Presentations and debrief