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Build Your Legos, Build Your Brain!

CSEF · 2008 Cognitive Science (Junior Division Only)

Tanner Clark · Acacia Middle School, Hemet, Riverside County

Overview

Objectives/Goals This project asks the question #Does playing with Legos every day improve boys# math scores?# Methods/Materials Ten fifth grade boys were selected from two different classes. One class was an advanced/proficient class; one class was a basic class. Of the ten boys chosen from each class, five became the test group and five became the control group. Ten original Lego sets were designed using Lego Digital Designer. Both classes were given a pretest. Each day for ten days, boys from the experimental group from each class were given a different Lego set to build at home each night. At the end of the ten day building period a post test was given. Results Boys in the control group from the basic class outperformed the experimental group from the same class. Boys in the experimental group from the proficient/advanced class outperformed the control group from the same class. Conclusions/Discussion Though the results of the initial experiment were inconclusive, enough information was gathered from the process to provide guidelines for establishing further controls for the experiment when it was repeated. The experiment was repeated using boys from two sixth grade honors math classes. Post test scores were much lower than pretest scores for both the experimental and the control group. However, post test scores for the experimental group did not decrease as much as post test scores for the control group. Even though all scores went down between the pretest and the post test, boys who played with Legos had less of a drop in their post tests scores, indicating that playing with Legos had a positive effect on their learning.

Summary statement

My project is about establishing a connection between building with Legos and improving math scores.

Help received

My mom helped me type the report. Mrs. Denbaugh and Mr. Baggett, two teachers, provided the Saxon Math test generators for me to use, Mrs. Denbaugh, Mrs. Sachs, and Mrs. Reisland provided time and/or students for the experiment.

Competition history

  • CSEF 2008 Cognitive Science (Junior Division Only) · Entry J0605

Resources

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