It's amazing how far we have introduced the LEGO pieces in our lives or at least those of our children. If a few years ago, the factory of the colored pieces was about to close now it is already part of the daily decoration of our homes.
We have incorporated them so much that we have even known about a teacher who teaches math to her students with LEGO pieces. It is clear that this Newyorquina, a third grade teacher knows how to take students to their field.
Alycia Zimmerman, so our teacher is called, she thought it would be a good idea to use LEGO pieces to express mathematical concepts, from simple addition or subtraction to even more complex concepts such as fractions and squares.
Fractions are assimilated much better when students can work with tangible objects, says Zimmerman.
It is not a new idea, in many schools they already teach quantity concepts with a kind of bars of different sizes, but it is clear that this goes a little further. Alycia also says that LEGO blocks allow her a greater number of possibilities than the blocks that are usually used at school.
Explore not play
Alycia has things very clear. "If you give a student a bag of LEGO pieces the first thing he will do is start playing, building towers or exchanging pieces".
So what he does is give them a small amount of time to "explore the different mathematical possibilities" that the blocks that have given them have. With this it is clear that they are going to play, but the change to a more serious path will be simpler than if you directly try to deal with the storm.
Students do mathematical exercises in which they have the LEGO models and pieces in front. If English is not a problem for you, here you have some forms of exercises that you can download, divisions with LEGO and fractions are some of those that you can find on their website.
