Monday, June 29, 2015

Legos and Job Skills

Who knew Legos could help teach a life skill? Apparently a lot of people did, but I only just learned this myself from reading another teacher's blog.

Today's hilighted lesson included 3, 50-60 piece Lego puzzles. The objective? Divide the work into three jobs: builder, supplier, and instructor. The instructor is the heart of the team, they are responsible for naming what "supplies" are needed to build, and they must be able to describe the building process to the builder in a way that the person can understand. The supplier must organize the "supplies," and then listen to the instructor to identify and provide the supplies being described to the builder. The builder is the last piece of this team who must use the supplied provided and listen to the instructor to attempt to build the item being instructed based off of the instructions given. 

I was amazed by everyone's involvement in the Lego activity. Half the class instantly perked up as soon as I wrote the word "Legos" on my daily schedule and the rest happily joined in once we got started. I saw so many amazing accomplishments happening at once. For starters I have to give a huge shout out to my trainee who likes to refer to himself as "Dr. Fluffy." This one particular person instantly picked up on a need to sort each Lego piece by color and looks. Second, I was amazed by how the small community within the classroom instantly fell into the flow of their roles and did their best to help to reach the ultimate and oh-so-important goal, to build a tiny Lego plane. In all seriousness everyone learned a good lesson about how when one is trying to follow instructions there are certain requirements: give instructions OTHER people can understand, ask questions when in doubt, it's okay to make mistakes, and listen carefully. 

I look forward to practicing these skills more in the future, especially because my amazing boss was thoughtful enough to buy Lego puzzles which could be assembled into 3 different models. In the future the students will practice acting in each role with each different model in order to feel comfortable in each. 

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