Interview With a LEGO® Brick

Engineering design: Form and function

Preteach Vocabulary (3-5 minutes)

• Play the online vocabulary slideshow. This article’s featured words are plastic, hundreds, studs, tubes, and build.

Preteach Navigating the Page (3 minutes)

• Point out the numbers in the interview. Explain that kids will read the questions and answers in the order of the numbers. It will be important to pay attention to this when they get to the end of a column.

• If you live in a district where kids can partner up, pair kids up to read the interview out loud a few times.
• Tell kids that they should read with expression. How should questions sound when you read them out loud? What are the personalities of the characters?
• First Read: Each partner should quietly read the interview to himself or herself. This is to get the meaning and the feel of the interview.
• Second Read: Now the pairs will read their parts out loud to each other. The child playing Question Mark can hold a pencil like a microphone (with the eraser end up) while asking questions.
• Third and Fourth Reads: Kids will be amazed at how much more fluently they read each time. They just got so much practice with reading fluency!
• NOTE: On our website, you can hear this interview read aloud, with each word highlighted along the way. Kids can listen to it to hear fluent reading modeled for them.
• If you live in a district where kids can’t be partners right now, you can be Question Mark, and you can call on different students to play the LEGO brick in small-group instruction. Ideally, each student will get a chance to read a part more than once.

• Assign students the online vocabulary slideshow to preview independently. This article’s featured words are plastic, hundreds, studs, tubes, and build.

Here are three ways to use this feature if you are doing remote learning.

Remote Option A: Live Synchronous Instruction (15-30 minutes)

• Share the article on your screen. Point out the numbers in the interview. Explain that kids will read in the order of the numbers.
• You can play the part of Question Mark, using your pencil as a microphone. Call on different students to read the LEGO brick’s answers.

Remote Option B: Family Fluency Activity (15-30 minutes)

• Have kids practice reading the interview aloud with a family member several times.
• When they are ready, they can read the interview out loud with their family member and record a video of it on a phone. The person playing Question Mark should hold a pencil as a microphone.
• Each student can then post his or her interview to the learning management system you use. For a fun way to build your classroom community, have kids watch each other’s interviews.
  
• Kids can also email you their filmed interviews.

Remote Option C: Kids Zoom With a Partner

• Assign kids partners and roles (one child is Question Mark, and the other child is the LEGO brick). Give partners a week to Zoom with each other and practice reading their parts multiple times. They can record the final time and share it with you.
  
• This would take more coordination with caregivers, but it would also be a fun project and a sweet way to offer kids a social connection during this isolating time. 

After Reading ELA Focus: Vocabulary (15 minutes)

• Have students complete the “LEGO Brick Crossword Puzzle” skills sheet to reinforce the vocabulary words used in this article.
• You can distribute the printed sheet if you’re in school or assign the online page if you are remote.

Craft Extension: Make a Microphone (20 minutes)

• We will have a Question Mark interview in every issue. Kids can make microphones from balls of tinfoil and toilet paper rolls to use for the interviews. Just stuff the tinfoil ball into one end of the toilet paper roll. You can keep these all year long!