There are a wide range of students who take part in VEX Robotics Competitions, just as there are in all classrooms. Students on your team may vary in age, experience, and have different needs. This article will give you ways to tailor, or differentiate, the key elements of a Competition 101 STEM Lab to best meet the needs of your students, and ensure everyone on the team can be included and successful.
Adapting Video-Based Instruction
Many sessions include videos to help teach a concept or process for the session activities. There are several considerations when engaging with videos with different learners. Make sure students have access to the content in the way that works best for them.
Here are some ways to approach video-based instruction with your team:
- Recap as a whole team - After watching a video, come together as a whole team to review. Have students recap the main ideas in the video in their own words, and ask follow-up questions to help make sure that everyone is on the same page.
- Watch the video yourself, and present the information to the team - Video may not be the best medium for all students. You can watch a video and share the information with students in your own way.
- Engage with videos as a whole team - For younger students in particular, you may find it helpful to watch a video as a whole group, rather than individually. This can help you ensure that students are paying attention while the video is playing, and you can pause it as needed to emphasize an idea or ask questions.
Strategies for Facilitating Conversations
Students on your team will likely have varying levels of comfort and experience with conversation-based learning. Team members need to feel safe and supported in sharing ideas with one another in order to make the most of collaborative discussions. See this article to learn more about creating a positive team culture.
Here are some ideas to help you facilitate meaningful, inclusive discussions:
- Give students time to think about their answers before engaging - Not all students are ready to share right away. Giving time and space for students to consider the question and their answer can help ensure that all voices are heard and included.
- Offer multiple means of communicating - Conversations don't have to be just verbal. You can try strategies like having students write responses and questions on the board; using different colored flags to indicate agreement, disagreement, or questions while the conversation unfolds; or using something like a "talking stick" to help students take turns and make sure everyone gets a chance to contribute.
- Incorporate more no-stakes conversations to get students comfortable with expressing ideas and asking questions - Conversational skills take practice to develop. Practicing conversations and interaction skills with topics that don't have a direct bearing on the competition can lower the stakes for participating, and give students a chance to build their comfort and confidence. This can also help when preparing for things like interviews at the actual competition.
Supporting Notebooking for All
Whether it's recording team rules, collecting data about drive modes, or noting robot design ideas–there are many ways to document! All teams need to keep an engineering notebook for the competition, but the type of notebook and the style of documentation will vary based on what works best for the students on your team.
Here are some ways you can differentiate with documentation:
- Use technologies like voice-to-text or digital sketching to make sure all students can document effectively - Digital notebooks may enable you to leverage accessibility technologies that support all students to document successfully. This also extends to combining digital and paper notebooks into one. You can scan handwritten or drawn notebook pages into a digital notebooks to ensure everyone can be successful.
- Encourage students to look at how other teams are documenting - Part of a collaborative competition environment is that teams learn from and with one another about all facets of the competition - including documentation! Sharing things like these interviews with teams about their notebooks can inspire team members and give them ideas for how to capture their thinking in a notebook.
- Have students work with notebook partners when it is their turn to document - Team members can work collaboratively to record data, details, discussions, and decisions in creative ways. Having a partner can also help support students who struggle with documentation to feel more included and comfortable with notebooking.
Adapting Activities and Their Task Cards
There are a wide range of activities in a Competition 101 STEM Lab. Depending on the age and experience level of the students on your team, you may want to modify activities to better meet your students where they are. Be sure you evaluate each activity individually to determine how and when to make adjustments.
Here are some things you can do to modify activities:
- Carry out activities as whole team guided explorations - Particularly for younger students, completing an activity as a whole group exercise, rather than independent inquiry, can help you to ensure that all team members are staying on task and getting the most from the activity.
- Modify the task card to meet your team's needs - The task cards are editable, and you can adjust them to make activities shorter, more scaffolded, or clearer to your team. For example, you can split one task card into multiple activities, add additional steps to an activity, or adjust the checklist.
- Group experienced students with novice team members - If carrying out activities in stations, you can encourage the more experienced team members to take on a leadership role and guide younger or newer students through an activity. This can help free you up to work more closely with certain groups, while supporting students' developing leadership skills.
- Recruit additional facilitators - Having extra hands is always helpful! You can have alumni team members or adult mentors join you for sessions where you think your students might need more support. Remind anyone joining you of the student-centered nature of the competition, and make it clear how they can best help the team during the session.