1. Introduction

Introduction

At Middle School, students become independent learners, developing critical thinking, growing ideas, and building their own creations through teamwork and communication. By combining their design and coding skills, they can create innovative solutions to real-world problems with the use of LEGO® MINDSTORMS® Education EV3.

Teachers know that hands-on learning engages students at every level, sparks creativity, develops critical thinking skills, ignites career possibilities — and is just plain fun! LEGO®MINDSTORMS® Education EV3 is a hands-on, cross-curricular STEM solution that engages students by providing the resources to design, build and program their creations while helping them develop essential 21st-century skills such as creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication.

The combination of physical LEGO® bricks, standards-aligned activities, and intuitive block-based coding environment means that interactive, creative learning is easier than ever to achieve. The set contains an Intelligent Brick that works with more than 540 building elements and data logging capability to motivate students to plan, predict, test, problem-solve, analyze, and explore, all while deepening their STEM learning and developing career-readiness skills.

Lesson Description

Beginner: These lessons will teach you to move and turn the robot, use the sensors, and use loops and switches.

Intermediate: These lessons introduce more advanced programming techniques such as My Blocks, variables, parallel beams, calibration and math/logic blocks.

Advanced: These lessons assume that you are comfortable using all the blocks in the EV3 environment. The advanced lessons teach you to more sophisticated programs such as menu systems, proportional line followers, squaring on lines and stall detection techniques.

Lesson Structure

1. Each lesson starts with a list of objectives and ends with a challenge
2. In most lessons, we provide hints in the form of Pseudocode. Students who need a hint should look at the Pseudocode.
3. We provide a challenge solution as well, but want students to complete the challenge on their own before checking the solution
4. A discussion guide is included after the challenge that will help understand the main objectives
5. Some lessons have companion worksheets for students. More will be added over time.

Lessons Objectives
Lesson 0 Summary Module 3

Lesson 1 Ramping up Speed
o Learn what ramp up means
o Learn how and when to use ramp up
o Learn how to use the Timer Block

Lesson 2 Alignment
o Learn how to get your robot to square up (straighten out) when it comes to a line
o Learn how squaring (also known as aligning on a line) can help the robot navigate
o Learn how to improve initial code for aligning by repeating a technique
o Practice creating a useful My Block

Lesson 3 Stall Detection
o Learn what stall detection is and why it is useful
o Learn how stall detection can help your robot recover from failures
o Learn how to move on the next block when your robot is stalled

Lesson 4 Arrays
o Build upon skills from the Variables lesson in Intermediate
o Learn how to read/write to arrays
o Learn about the Array Operations block
o Learn to use the loop count in a loop