Everything is Awesome when Lego is involved!

It has been a long wait but finally I was able to get my hands on the Lego Story Starter Kit last week! This was shown to me well over a year ago when I was talking to @InspiredMind5.

I am a massive fan of camouflage learning: bringing children's interests into the classroom to inspire writing. You will have seen plenty of ideas on my blog about using Minecraft to inspire writing and the premise is the same with lego - if children can construct a story they will be more inspired to write well about it.

The lego story starter kit involves children working in a group of 5 to build and construct scenes for a story, they can then use the visualiser app to create a comic strip or storyboard to help structure and then write the story. The kit comes with a curriculum pack crammed with useful lesson ideas.

Last week, I worked with one class and wanted to see how the story starter kit works. As we were limited for time, I challenged the class to choose a story they know well and build three scenes - beginning, middle and end. We would show the rest of the class using the iVisualiser app and try to guess what the story was. Can you guess some of their creations?




(Goldielocks, Romeo and Juliet and Little Red Riding Hood)


Today I got to work with Year 4 all day and so really wanted to see how the story starter kit can inspire writing. 
We started by listening to some music, I have previously blogged about the power of music to inspire writing. Today we used the following track to help us visualise a story - 


The music follows the pattern of starting postitive and twisting into a dark and menacing tone which finishes with a big climax. The following video explains the process the children went through after listening to the music - 


I was really impressed with the writing the children produced and you can read their efforts by pausing the following video at any point -

In the afternoon, we looked at turning our writing into a film combining iMovie with Chatterkids, although we were slightly stretched for time, some of the children finished and were so proud of their creations! They would love to know what you think -


I have so many ideas about using the story starter kit over the next couple of weeks so please stay tuned! The story starter kit is by no means a cheap purchase, you can easily do the same activity if children were to bring in their own lego from home. However from the level of enthusiasm, engagement, collaboration, discussed and learning that took place today it will sure prove to be well worth the money!

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