VEX GO lessons

VEX V5
1

Hi everyone,

I’m currently planning a 1-year VEX GO curriculum for weekly classes, totaling roughly 40 lessons.

The first few lessons focused on getting familiar with the VEX GO parts, which went really well. However, when we introduced coding, students ran into quite a bit of confusion and hit some roadblocks.

With about 35 lessons remaining, I’d love some advice on how to best structure the rest of the year:

  1. Curriculum Focus: I’m considering covering basic mechanisms (gears, levers, pulleys, etc.) paired with free-building activities. Would this approach stay engaging and effective across 40 weeks, or do students need more structured progression?

  2. Coding Support: How do you scaffold coding concepts so students don’t get overwhelmed or frustrated?

  3. Pacing: I’m planning to rotate/switch topics every 2 classes to keep things fresh. Does a 2-lesson block per topic work well in practice, or is that too fast/slow for VEX GO STEM Labs?

Any suggestions, unit ideas, or sample scope-and-sequences would be greatly appreciated!

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Hi @Kai_Terami! Welcome to the Community! You ask a lot of great questions :slight_smile: Let me see if I can give you some resources to help you find answers.

  • In terms of curriculum - you can absolutely move back and forth between free-building and building mechanisms from build instructions! The Animal Rescue Activity Series is a good resource to introduce students to some free building, with a story theme. The Simple Machines STEM Lab is also helpful for bringing in some mechanism building. And an Activity like Astronaut Rescue can be a fun way to encourage free building and exploration of things like pulleys with kids.

  • In terms of coding support, there are a few different ways you can approach this. One is to start with using VEXcode VR (vr.vex.com) to introduce basic coding concepts with a virtual robot. With VR, students can build, test, and iterate on projects right within their browser window, with the robot moving in the Playground on the screen right away. That way the conceptual understanding of how to build projects can be foregrounded, so that then when you start coding a physical GO robot, like the Code Base, kids have an expectation of how to make it do things like move and turn. You can continually go back and forth between physical and virtual robots throughout the year - foreground a concept with VR, then apply it to physical robots.

  • In terms of pacing, the length of topic really depends on the resource you’re using, and how comfortable you and your students are with the speed. As a general guideline, I tend to think of Activities as being a “1 lesson” exploration, and then applying that thinking to an Activity Series. STEM Labs can be 1-2 classes per Lab, with a whole Unit extending from there. You can check out the Scope and Sequences at teachgo.vex.com for an idea of how to sequence and pace different resources together, with various focuses.

I hope this is helpful to get you started :slight_smile:

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