Journaling is a very important part of documenting your STEAM journey!
How do you have your students document their VEX experiences within the classroom?
#StayOrganized
#DocumentTheProcess
#VEXGO
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Love this, Danielle. Documenting the process is a habit that pays off all the way up through IQ and V5 notebooks.
Some approaches that work well at the GO level:
- Have the Journalist do the recording during the lab: sketches of the build, what the robot did, and what they changed.
- Use the data collection sheets from each STEM Lab as journal pages so the journal fills up naturally.
- Take a photo at each Mid-Play Break and have students write or dictate one sentence about it.
- End each class with the same prompts: What did we try? What happened? What will we do next time?
Looking forward to seeing how your students progress.
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Thank-you so much for these posts because I know I need to do a better job with this! I feel like time runs out SO quickly and I let the journal part go… we have many students for whom writing is a major challenge and this is a big ask. I am going to look at these posts and back at the video you showed us earler of the notebooking from K-12 to get me back on target! Seeing other people’s notebooks would be amazingly helpful too if anyone has any to share!!
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This article has a few examples you can reference. Let us know if you need anything else.
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Thank-you so much. You can probably tell I am very new to this. My question is not germaine to this topic… but it is perhaps a big ask. We are working on the clamshell in the ocean competition and the arm moves up and down too quicklly. I know the children can change the velocity when they code, but I would be so happy if we could have the option to set a lower velocity in drive mode. Would it be a collasal effort to add that feature in the drive screen? I am not familiar enough to know if this is a crazy request or if it’s something someone could add on. Thanks so much! Truly, I am so grateful to have found VEX. THe kids love it, the families love it. We have parents who have asked how to buy a kit for their children at home. You have a great product.
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Erin, great request, and good news: that feature is coming. Stay tuned!
On the writing piece, the journal doesn’t have to be written. A sketch, a photo, or a sentence a student dictates to a partner all count. What we care about is the thinking, not the handwriting.
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I know that this is an example of our123 platform, however it does showcase the simplicity of what notebook can look like at the younger level!
Note-booking “helps students make their process visible so they can remember what they tried, learn from evidence, and communicate their work clearly.” - VEX Robotics 
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