Using LEGO ® in the classroom isn’t a new idea. But it is a great idea. Building language using LEGO bricks is a fantastic way to engage a class, as well as provide a multi-sensory approach to building literacy skills.
Using either LEGO or Duplo, you can easily create some visually stimulating LEGO activities for the classroom and nursery with just a small selection of bricks.
These suggestions will help little learners identify and have fun with letters, spelling and storytelling.
Build words or sentences using LEGO bricks
Using LEGO bricks is a great way to help children learn the alphabet, as they can practice forming both uppercase and lower case letters with a selection of bricks.
Practice spelling
Use a marker pun to put letters on each brick and practice spellings with children. Encourage the children to be creative with their building, perhaps building lists of words on top of one another to make a wall of spellings.
Using LEGO brick in this way will almost certainly make the lesson more memorable and help to put those pesky spellings into their long-term memory.
Identify word classes
Use the LEGO bricks to begin identifying word classes. This activity can help even more grown up kids. It can be really difficult to identify word classes in sentences that have been presented to us. Practicing word classes using LEGO bricks can really help break this challenge down. Use different colours to represent different word classes and get children to build up sentences.
Explore common sentence patterns
A step on from identifying word classes is exploring common sentence patterns. Use the colour coded word class bricks to create sentences and use as a way of finding patterns in sentence construction. Pose questions to the class like: where are articles commonly found? And why might that be?
Use mini figures to teach prepositions
Give each pupil a mini-figure for them to hold. Then provide pupils a sentence on the board that includes a preposition. Children are then required to spot the preposition and demonstrate its meaning using the LEGO minifigure. For example, if the sentence is ‘The rabbit sat under the table.’ Children would put their LEGO min-figure under the table. Question pupils on their choices and which word is the preposition. They are unlikely to forget such a fun activity!
Re-tell stories using LEGO
Re-telling of stories is such a fantastic way of helping children’s writing and reading skills. Get pupils to create LEGO dioramas of the story you’re studying and use mini-figures to re-tell the story or use the opportunity for children to tell the story from a different point of view or by making small changes to the original story.
Whatever you try, why not let us know and we’ll share the results with fellow teachers! You can share your LEGO literacy lessons with us on our Facebook page Hope Education, or via Twitter @HopeEducationUK.
