THE NATURE OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
Engineering Resources (links included)
Engineering is Elementary (EiE)
This site gives educators and students access to videos, engineering design challenges, and other engineering resources. There are units worth of lesson plans and materials that you can purchase, but it also allows you to preview and get ideas. EiE also has resources for professional development which includes lists of workshops that educators can attend to further their engineering skills.
Teach Engineering has lesson plans, materials, project ideas, and the curriculum to go along with either NGSS or Common Core standards. You can search for each of the aforementioned resources by a specific standard as well.
The resources on Teach Engineering are free and include maker challenges for kids to attempt. The challenges (as well as lesson plans) give a grade level, engineering category, and time estimate which is extremely helpful.
This resource has lesson plans for every unit of science separated by age level and standard. Most of these lessons include hands-on activities for students to help solidify information and see how it plays a part in the real world around them. Each lesson plan is free for teachers to use. An example for elementary age students is "The Boat and the Beetle" which introduces the concepts of buoyancy and displacement.
This specific link offers a detailed outline for educators to follow when designing their engineering lesson plans. Throughout the rest of the website includes articles on topics from how to make engineering accessible in low-income school districts, to videos with real students sharing their engineering stories. This resource can be used to give students role models that are close to their own age and doing incredible things with engineering. These videos also show students how accessible and real engineering is for them. (video example)
Born to Engineer has resources for teachers, parents, students, and policymakers. This makes it an excellent source because it is something that you can use in your classroom, then send home with your students that really connect with it. These resources include toolkits, podcasts, book club information, and many others. The student resources can be useful from the student's first introduction to engineering (young engineers events) to their college education (information on technical colleges and engineering competitions.
This resource is not necessarily an explicit engineering source, but a collection of articles relating to intense topics in the educational realm. There are many articles arguing for the importance of and benefits to teaching engineering in schools. Although, these articles would be extremely useful if you needed to present to families, coworkers, or administration about the significance of teaching engineering in schools.
Lesson Plans
- "Potato Power" - from Teach Engineering - Grades 3-5
Students use potatoes to light an LED clock (or light bulb) as they learn how a battery works in a simple circuit and how chemical energy changes to electrical energy. As they learn more about electrical energy, they better understand the concepts of voltage, current, and resistance.
- "Clean Energy: Hydropower" - from Teach Engineering - Grades 3-5
Hydropower generation is introduced to students as a common purpose and benefit of constructing dams. Through an introduction to kinetic and potential energy, students come to understand how a dam creates electricity. They also learn the difference between renewable and non-renewable energy.
- "Smooth Operator" - from Try Engineering - Grades 3+
This lesson focuses on surgical instrument design. Teams of students construct surgical instruments from everyday materials. They then test their surgical instruments to determine how well they can perform a simulated “surgical procedure”.
- "Waterproof That Roof!" - from Try Engineering - Grades 3+
This lesson focuses on how structural engineers have improved the designs of buildings - specifically roofing - over the years to improve the quality of homes and lives. Teams of students work together using simple materials to design a roof that will keep the contents of a box dry during a water test.
- "Straw Towers to the Moon" - from Teach Engineering - Grades 2-4
Students learn about civil engineers and work through each step of the engineering design process in two mini-activities that prepare them for a culminating challenge to design and build the tallest straw tower possible, given limited time and resources.