Engineering Unit

engineering and elementary classrooms.

Understanding engineering engineering is the process of identifying a problem

within a community or personal problem, designing solutions that could

possibly fix this problem, testing the designs in hopes that

it eventually will become a solution to the problem you

first identified.

Engineering is problem solving.

It is thinking outside of the box, which means anyone

can be an engineer regardless of age.

Race, social, economic status.

Engineering is our past, present and future, and as an

educator we need to cultivate it in our classrooms More.

To do this, we need to start integrating engineering into

every subject that we teach to begin.

Science is probably the most easiest subject.

Thio integrate engineering in almost every subject or topic that

we teach in.

Science has an engineering component to it, Um, but it

does not have to stop at science.

You can easily integrate engineering into your reading standards, social

studies standards and even math standards.

Teachers need to stop thinking of engineering as a separate

topic or separate unit and instead start to incorporated through

all the subjects that they teach.

I think this will show students that engineering is not

just a science related topic, but more Ralph rounded in

community based.

The engineering design process has specific steps that you need

to follow.

First, you need to define the problem.

Then you need to identify constraints on your solution.

Brainstorm multiple solutions for the problem.

Select the most promising solution.

Prototype your solution.

Test and evaluate your prototype.

It's great to improve your prototype and communicate your solution

to the community or whoever.

The problem is, um, that you can communicate that to

so the difference between science method, an engineering design process,

an engineering design.

You define the problem science method.

You state a question engineering design.

You do background research, and you do the same thing

in a scientific method.

Then, for engineering design, you specify your requirements.

In the scientific method, you formulate a hypothesis and identify

variables. Um, engineering design.

You can create alternative solutions and choose the best one,

and then you build a prototype testing redesign if necessary,

and communicate your results.

The rest of the scientific method is designed an experiment.

Test your hypothesis by doing an experiment, analyze your results

and draw conclusions and communicate your results.

So if the objective is to invent a new product

program experience, et cetera.

Then you should follow the engineering and design process.

Oh, and then a resource.

I suggest educators start using is linked engineering.

It has resource is how you can get started with

engineering in your classroom and even has examples you can

use for your classroom.

So the engineering activity that I did in my classroom

was an indigenous TP challenge.

Students were working in groups afford to design an accurate

model of a teepee that could be moved from one

location to another.

This connects to our social studies where my students were

learning about indigenous regions and shelters they created within huge

region. Um, specifically, Teepees were used by the indigenous people

of the Plains region, and they carry their supplies for

their shelters with them as they moved around, which makes

this, um, indigenous TP challenge relevant to what we're learning

in class.

So a little bit more about this challenge, students had

four minutes together.

Natural resource is they found outside.

Then they had 15 minutes to construct their TPS.

They built it on the flat surface and they had

a walk it 5 m without the teepee falling over.

Um, it follows the following three engineering design standards.

There are a few examples of what my students made

at the end.

There end products.

As you can tell, the bottom picture has, um, some

mud and dirt as the base and the top left

picture. My students pounded egg carton outside and they used

it also as a base, which I thought was pretty

creative. So the materials they could use, um, five bamboo

skiers, 2.5 ft of yarn, 11 by 17 brown construction

paper, glue and scissors and anything they found outside.

And I had all of this meat, all of these

materials at home and at school.

So this challenge costs me nothing.

And then, lastly for our class project that I hope

to dio next semester when we're learning about Earth spheres

is designing ways to get clean water.

And this is for fifth grade.

I attached the link to where I found this engineering

design challenge.

The standards that it covers is an engineering standard of

generate and compare multiple possible solutions to a problem based

on how well each is likely to meet the criteria

and constraints of the problem.

and then obtaining combined information about ways individual communities use

science ideas to protect the earth resource is and its

environment. And then this project will be three days long

at the end of the fifth grade.

Science tune in on Earth spears.

So the engineering connection is water sources are increasingly becoming

polluted by human made and natural contaminants.

In addition, water sources are beginning to retain less and

less water for people's daily needs.

Engineers have long recognized this as a growing problem, and

they're being called upon to design better ways to manage

our water resource is and develop advanced technologies to clean

our water and preserve and protect our waters.

Sources. Finding solutions to meet a community's water needs requires

that engineers take into consideration that region's climate as well

as the available natural and human resource is.

So. The objectives for this project is our Our students

should be able thio less Several royal scenarios that involve

threats to community water resource is explained the importance of

and challenges involved in cleaning water for human use and

to describe how engineers are involved with finding and cleaning

water, so the process they will follow is the class

will be divided into teams of 2 to 3 students

each and then the Students team represents a water engineering

company that helps solve problems of families or communities that

need clean drinking water.

So the first thing that they will dio is I

will assign each team are particular climate, and for two

minutes they will have to brainstorm and write down different

water. Resource is for that particular climate, and then disaster

strikes. After two minutes, they will go around to each

group and tell them that they could no longer get

water from that water source they listed, and they need

to brainstorm what they could do if the water source

was removed.

Then they will write down the steps of the engineering

design process and review with the students how all engineers

like to solve problems to make things better.

And then I will hand each of the team a

problem scenario, and then each team will brainstorm a way

to fix the problem and let them know, um, any

designer Methodist fine, except it must be realistic.

And then they will draw their engineering method to fix

the problem on a large paper using colored pencils, and

students will also have toe label the parts of their

design after students share their design products.

Um, each team will switch their original family scenario card

with another group and asked students to evaluate the current

designs for the new scenarios.

And then students will discuss if and why their design

would or would not work in this different situation in

a different climate, and I will ask them to think

about what they could do to make it work for

the new conditions.

Here are the family scenario note cards that each team

will get there are five that they could receive.

Engineering Unit

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