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Implementing VEX 123 STEM Labs

STEM Labs are designed to be the online teacher’s manual for VEX 123. Like a printed teacher’s manual, the teacher-facing content of the STEM Labs provides all of the resources, materials, and information needed to be able to plan, teach, and assess with VEX 123. The Lab Image Slideshows are the student-facing companion to this material. For more detailed information about how to implement a STEM Lab in your classroom, see the Implementing VEX 123 STEM Labs article.

Goals and Standards

Goals

Students will apply

  • How to create and start projects using the Coder and Coder cards.
  • How to use a step-by-step process to plan a path for the 123 Robot and connect each desired behavior to a Touch button or Coder card command.
  • How to use the Coder and Coder cards to code the 123 Robot to move in an intended way to complete a challenge.

Students will make meaning of

  • How using the Coder provides students with the ability to create more complex coding projects than can be created using the Touch buttons to code the 123 Robot.
  • How each Coder card is a command that corresponds to a robot behavior or action.
  • How to use the Coder to code the robot to solve a challenge, such as driving to visit animals in an imaginary zoo.

Students will be skilled at

  • Waking up the 123 Robot.
  • Connecting the 123 Robot to the Coder.
  • Planning a path for the 123 Robot.
  • Ordering Coder cards in the correct sequence to accomplish the desired task.
  • Starting a project using the Coder.

Students will know

  • How to create a project using the Coder and Coder cards.
  • How one Coder card corresponds to one behavior of the 123 Robot.
  • How Touch buttons on the 123 Robot correspond to Coder cards.
  • How to plan a path for the 123 Robot and use it to create a Coder project.

Objective(s)

Objective

  1. Students will demonstrate how to plan a path for a coding project using a step-by-step process.
  2. Students will demonstrate how to use the Coder and Coder cards to build a project that has the 123 Robot solve a challenge.
  3. Students will use the "Drive 2", "Drive 4" and "Turn around" Coder cards to build a project to drive the 123 Robot to a specific location.

Activity

  1. In Play Part 1, students will use a step-by-step process to plan a path for the 123 Robot to drive to the tigers on the zoo map Field using the Coder and Motion Planning Printable.
  2. In Engage, students will review what they learned about the Coder in Lab 1, and connect their robots and Coders. They will work as a whole class to create a project for the robot to drive to the the tigers on the zoo map.
  3. In Play Part 2, students will use the "Drive 2", "Drive 4", and "Turn around" Coder cards to build a project to drive the 123 Robot to the Bears in their small groups.

Assessment

  1. Students will use the Coder and Motion Planning Printable to document their planning process throughout the Lab.
  2. In the Share section, students will be asked to explain how they knew which Coder cards to use in their project to successfully code the 123 Robot to visit the tigers. They will also document this process using the Coder and Motion Planning Printable.
  3. In the Share section, students will be asked to explain how they used the ""Drive 2", "Drive 4", and "Turn around" Coder cards in their project to successfully code the 123 Robot to visit the bears. They will also document this process using the Coder and Motion Planning Printable.

Connections to Standards

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