Hi all. I am planning a schedule for a day of VEX IQ activities. My first option is to have my students complete 1) Navigate the Maze with Driver Control, 2) Block Party, then 3) Defend the Castle. Do students like these activities/are they challenging enough? The idea is that this day will build upon what they have learned hence having them start with a basebot, then moving to a simple Clawbot, and then ultimately a Clawbot. Is there enough time in a 180-minute session to build + complete 3 activities? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
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Good afternoon!
Yes, indeed, children enjoy the activities you mentioned. I believe there should be no problems with organizing the activities and competitions themselves.
I am a little concerned about the models. Regarding the first basic model, it is quite typical and children usually build it fairly quickly, so everything should be fine there.
As for the second model — Simple Clawbot, the instruction has been significantly rebuilt and now consists of up to about 7 pages.
However, with the Ultimately Clawbot, in my opinion there might be some timing challenges, because rebuilding this model will not be as quick as the previous two. Therefore, this should be taken into account: either stop at the Simple Clawbot, or plan additional time, since rebuilding the robot from Simple Clawbot to Ultimately Clawbot will take longer (35 pages). This is important to consider during planning.
You have already been working with your students for some time and you know their level and their speed of building and programming. Based on this, try to estimate in advance how much time will be needed for building or rebuilding the model.
It is also important to create a fairly clear and structured plan for your event: when you start, approximately how much time is allocated for building (plus or minus about 5 minutes), then when you announce the task, and after that when you run the competitions between the students.
Please also consider that if a team has two students and the robot is controlled using a remote controller, the process should be organized so that each student has the opportunity to participate.
One more important point during preparation. If your tasks include elements of programming, you already know the level of your students. However, I would recommend preparing ready-made programs for these robots in advance, so that if the students cannot complete the programming task, you can quickly load a prepared program.
It is also helpful to prepare templates or screenshots of finished programs or their parts. If students are running out of time, you can give them these hints and avoid spending too much time explaining everything again.
I believe that with this approach everything will work out very well.
Thank you.
Sorry for the long read.
PS. If you share more details about your event, I may be able to help you better.
