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
- How to correctly describe the flow of a project that uses multiple [If then] blocks inside of a [Forever] block.
- How to describe why [If then] blocks are used with [Forever] blocks.
Students will make meaning of
- How to use conditionals and loops together to use robotic decision making to control the project flow.
- Why a [Forever] block would be used in a project.
Students will be skilled at
- Using multiple [If then] blocks in a project to instruct the robot to complete different actions based on a condition.
- Adding a [Forever] block to a project to continually check conditions.
- Creating a project to make the Robot Arm sort objects based on color.
Students will know
- That the [If then] block is a C block that runs the blocks inside of it if the Boolean condition is reported to be True.
- How you can have multiple [If then] blocks in a project to be able to check for multiple colors, and have multiple behaviors based on those colors.
- That the [Forever] block is a C block that repeats the behaviors inside of it forever.
- That a [Forever] block is needed to make the Robot Arm sort objects repeatedly.
Objective(s)
Objective
- Students will identify and describe what an [If then] block is, and how to use it in a project to make the Robot Arm sort objects based on color.
- Students will identify and describe what a [Forever] block is, and how it functions with the [If then] block.
Activity
- In Play Part 1, students will use the [If then] block in their projects to make the Robot Arm sort a disk of one color. In the Mid-Play Break, students will look at each other’s code, and describe which color the Robot Arm will sort. In Play Part 2, they will apply this knowledge to code the Robot Arm to sort multiple colored disks.
- In Play Part 1, students will troubleshoot their projects’ use of the [If then] block, by adding a [Forever] block. They will discuss how the [Forever] block continually checks the conditions of the [If then] block, and apply this knowledge to the coding in Play Part 2.
Assessment
- During the Share discussion, students will explain how they used the [If then] blocks to create a pattern the robot could follow to make decisions about how to sort the colored disks.
- During the Share discussion, students will explain how the use of the [Forever] block made their code more effective, and how it functioned to make the Robot Arm sort objects as intended.