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Implementing VEX GO STEM Labs

STEM Labs are designed to be the online teacher’s manual for VEX GO. 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 GO. 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 GO STEM Labs article.

Goals and Standards

Goals

Students will apply

  • Collecting data and using it to predict whether an item is magnetic or not.
  • Using data and observations to propose cause and effect relationships. 
  • How magnets can create a force that can push or pull certain objects without direct contact.  

Students will make meaning of

  • How magnets can interact with each other and with other objects through magnetism, a force that can attract or repel objects that have a magnetic material inside them.

Students will be skilled at

  • Building a Magnet Car from written directions. 
  • Determining whether objects are magnetic and which are not.
  • Predicting the motion of magnets, based on knowledge that they repel and attract.  

Students will know

  • How to classify which objects are magnetic by a set of criteria.
  • Identify that magnets have two sides or “poles”—north and south.  

Objective(s)

Objective

  1. Students will collect accurate data in order to identify the properties of magnets in the Engage Section of the Lab.
  2. Students will identify the properties that make an object magnetic in the Engage Section of the Lab.  
  3. Students will use magnetic force to move an object in the Play section of the Lab. 
     

Activity

  1. In the Play Part 1 section, students will conduct six trials in which they will observe and record whether an object is magnetic. 
  2. Using observations and data collected in the Play Part 1 section, students will identify what properties magnetic materials share. 
  3. Students will apply magnetic force to propel the Magnet Car forward and reverse in Play Part 2.
     

Assessment

  1. Students will record their six trial results on a Data Collection Sheet in Play Part 1. 
  2. In the Mid-Play Break, students will analyze their results from the trials and identify that magnetic objects contain metal, such as iron, cobalt, or nickel. 
  3. Students will be able to successfully move their magnetic car using the magnetic force of additional magnets in Play Part 2, and share their explanations of the relationship between the Magnet Car’s movement relative to magnetic force in the Share section.  

Connections to Standards

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