Lego Master Educator Melissa Edmonds uses iconic plastic bricks to teach gifted students.
(Photo Courtesy of Melissa Edmonds)
Here’s a sneak peek of our State of Education section in our April 2022 issue (out now).
It’s easy to find Melissa Edmonds’s classroom: Just follow the sound of clicking LEGOs. A gifted education resource teacher at Kyle R. Wilson Elementary School in Woodbridge, Edmonds is one of Virginia’s first LEGO Master Educators.
“I think LEGOs are important learning tools because of the opportunities for student choice, problem-solving, and creativity,” she says. Edmonds was selected as one of the first 100 LEGO Master Educators in 2018. She’s now among about 250 teachers worldwide to receive the designation.
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“I was most excited about the opportunity to give input about the plans for future sets and lessons,” she says, adding, “The kids were pretty excited, too, but I think they were thinking ‘Master Builder’ like they see on TV.”
Edmonds also coaches the school’s robotics team, which participates in the FIRST LEGO League. “So far, we haven’t entered any of the FLL competitions. We prefer to focus on the coding and the experience,” she says.
Generous donations through DonorsChoose allowed her to purchase several sets of LEGO Spike Prime, which offers new building elements and hardware, intuitive drag-and-drop coding language based on Scratch, and text-based coding with Python. “LEGO Spike Prime is the latest and greatest in the LEGO Education world. I’m thrilled to be using them with my students.”
Edmonds’s other sets include LEGO StoryStarter, which students use to build a scene and then write a story about it; LEGO Simple and Powered Machines; and LEGO WeDO, which allows younger students with the ability to build and code things that move, make sounds, and light up.
“Oh, and of course, I have a giant tub of regular LEGOs for whatever else we want to do.”
