Freeze Tag Extensions

VEX IQ
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Hi All,

Looking for extensions to the Freeze Tag Lab for our science students. Any additional activities you may have developed or seen that you’d be willing to share? My teachers have followed the lab pretty well and students have made different iterations to their bots based on trial runs. Just looking for as many different activities we can do to extend the Lab.

Thanks in advance!

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Hi @Mike_Bothwell - great question! Here are a few ideas I had off the top of my head, based on some of the things students are learning and doing in the Lab.

For more driving practice
There are so many ways that you can give students extra practice or challenges around the remote control driving that they are doing in this competition:

  • Basebot Driver Activity - In this IQ Activity, students set up a maze or a neighborhood, and practice driving around it as effectively as possible.

  • Relay Races Set up a course (or use the maze from the Basebot Driver Activity. To participate in the race, each member of a group has to drive through the maze as fast as possible to get their total team time. That way there is more impetus to raise the driving skills of those that might be struggling to drive.

For an added challenge to the Team Freeze Tag game

  • Build some obstacles onto the Field - whether it’s attaching Cubes in different locations, or building small walls out of extra Beams and Plates, adding obstacles gives more opportunity for students to engage the Bumper and get ‘frozen’. Precision driving becomes even more important, and it also beefs up the strategy for playing. Teams can can use the obstacles to play ‘offense’, or ‘corner’ their opponents into some of those obstacles.

For an extra communication challenge

  • Blind Driver Exercises - An important part of Team Freeze Tag is communication within a team. To help students work on their communication skills in a really fun way, set up a simple driving task (you could even revisit one from the Practice activities in the Unit). The ‘catch’ here is that the Driver gets blindfolded so they cannot see where the robot is going. Other members of the team have to figure out how to communicate what they need to do to be able to navigate the task effectively.

You can do this verbally to start, then challenge students to streamline their communication - is there a way to give cues without words, or using signs or signals? Talk about what the driver needed from their partners, and vice versa.

There’s just a few ideas to get you started - I hope that helps!

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Thank you for this! I’ll pass this along to the teachers.

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