Using Legos in Reading

I LOVE using Legos in the classroom. Just the mention of the word "Legos" gets fourth grade students excited!  I first started incorporating Legos into my math class. It isn't very hard to come up with ways that they can be used for manipulatives during math. However, a workshop that I attended showed these really awesome Lego StoryStarter kits that used Legos for reading manipulatives! 

Over my short career as a teacher, I have realized that reading comprehension seems to be what students struggle with the most in upper grades. Being at this workshop and seeing how Legos could put hands-on materials in students hands during ELA block really intrigued me, but the kits were more expensive than I could afford with my designated classroom funds. 

So, I improvised and started out with random Legos that I collected.  My kiddos would use what bricks and Lego people I had in my collection to build summaries of passages and brainstorm for writing pieces. The results that I saw were amazing. My reluctant and struggling readers were making great progress because reading had become more concrete to them. 

The following pictures are of some of my students using my homemade Lego kits. 

I loved the progress that I was seeing so much that I decided I had to get the real kits somehow, some way.  I had two of the Lego StoryStarter kits funded through a donorschoose.org project. This past year,  I wrote a grant through our local educational foundation and had four more kits and software funded. While homemade kits will work, if you have an opportunity to get the Lego StoryStarter sets, I highly recommend them. They are build specifically for ELA and contain setting pieces, character pieces, and a TON of other awesome pieces. 

Below are some pictures of my kiddos working with the StoryStarter kits.