Description
Introduction: The students are told about computer languages and how they have to be exact instructions, or the program doesn’t know how to handle them. The activity is designed to make students to understand the importance of unambiguous instructions.
Αctivity 1: Pair up the students. Students sit back to back to each other. The other one has a pile of legos in front of them. The other gets a lego structure from the teacher. The student with the structure gives verbal instructions to the other one to build an exact copy. (this takes 10-15 minutes and depends on the complexity and number of pieces of the model)
Discussion: When the copy is ready, the pair informs the teacher and they can take a good look at it together.
Talking points: What went wrong and why? What parts took time to instruct? Are the copies similar? Are all the parts correct? Is the handedness correct on every piece? Is the color correct on all pieces?
Then the more important part: How could these be improved? Should they name the parts beforehand together? Should they agree on color and shade names? What else? (5-10 minutes)
Αctivity 2: Students change roles and are given a different structure to copy. (10-15 minutes). If groups are getting ready early and there’s time left, they can mix up pairs or do structures to copy for other groups. If there’s more time, students can continue with more difficult structures.