Activity Summary:

Students create an instruction guide to practice visual and/or oral communication.

Instructions:

Lego Buckets

Team Name(s): Lauren Malone; Derek Hanson

Concept(s) Practiced: Visual communication; Oral communication

Assignment Type: Group activitiy

Materials Needed

• Legos
• Six (6) Tupperware containers
• Notecards
• Extra cameras (for groups w/o smartphones)

Sir Gerald Lego of Maloneia

Directions (Designed for T/Th 80 min. classes. Adjust to your own class timeframe.)

Prior to Class:

• Separate Legos into six (6) Tupperware buckets.
• Write one group name on each notecard
  • Place notecard in the bottom of the bucket
  • Make sure these stay with the designated bucket!
• Reserve extra cameras in case students do not all have phones

During Tuesday Class:

• Break students into groups of four (4).
• Explain the task: You must build something using all of your Legos, and design an instruction guide for your creation. You may use as many pictures & symbols as you want, but NO TEXT.
  • Students will have ten (10) minutes to brainstorm/play. Decide in that time what your team will build.
  • Designate roles – Builder(s), Photographer(s), Designer(s), Timekeeper(s)
  • Make sure that once you start actually building your creation, that the Photographer(s) is taking pictures as you go. You don’t want to start from scratch.
  • You have the next thirty (30) minutes to build your creation and take pictures for your instruction guide.
  • You have the final twenty (20) minutes to customize your instruction guide. Finish for homework and submit on [Your class management system/forum/email].
    • I create a folder in Google Docs, and give the Designer from each group access. That way they can upload their own, and access it on Day Two.
• Hand out the Lego buckets & start.
• Make sure to keep track of time!
• Collect Lego buckets with

It’s Abstract

During Thursday Class

• If you have not already, make sure the teams have access to each other’s instruction guides.
• Hand out the Lego buckets again. This time, each team gets another team’s bucket, and will be looking at that team’s instruction guide.
• Give them fifteen (15) minutes to build the other team’s creation.
• Discuss as a class what aided/hindered your understanding of this piece of visual communication
• Discuss rhetorical design choices.

Lego Windmill

Modification:

• Instead of having the students use the guide themselves, you can have one member from each group rotate, and give verbal directions based on the guide.
• To do this, have the rotating instructor take their team’s bucket of Legos and instruction guide with them when they move.