Introducing Engineering to K-8 Students will provide you with the tools you need to incorporate engineering design into your classroom. Rather than prescribing a specific curriculum to follow, this book will help you engage your students with hands-on, open-ended engineering design problems that can be easily integrated into your existing classroom setup. Beginning with the basics of K-8 engineering, and advancing to topics such as integrating engineering with other disciplines, documentation, and assessments, the chapters provide a how-to on creating open-ended engineering activities, design tasks, and projects that are reflective of the academic, social, emotional, developmental, and community goals of your students. An additional focus is on ways to adapt these pedagogical approaches to meet the needs of all students, representative of racially, ethnically, socioeconomically, and gender diverse populations and students who receive special education services. Case studies and practical implementation strategies are presented alongside more than fifteen lesson plans, with tips on how to modify the tasks presented in the book to work with your classroom and students. This user-centered approach will also help you create your own engineering lessons that meet your individual classroom objectives and interests, and be able to recognize and classify your students’ engineering behaviors to support them in enacting their ideas. No matter your experience or comfort level, this book will be an invaluable resource for elementary and middle school science and technology teachers at all career stages who are looking to introduce engineering design to their students. Additional classroom resources can be found online at introducingengineering.org.

"Picture your students designing a hearing aid for the main character in El Deafo-and then disguising it as a fashion accessory. Or imagine them helping the shipwrecked Swiss Family Robinson build a structure to keep them cool under the hot sun. Novel Engineering shows how your students can use anything from a picture book to a novel to a historical text as the basis for an engineering design challenge. This innovative resource will have your students pulling information from literature to identify a problem. Then, using details from the story, they'll apply the engineering design process to develop functional solutions for their "clients"-the book's characters. Novel Engineering provides you with plenty of practical guidance for integrating engineering and English language arts (ELA), including a thorough introduction to the concept and detailed implementation advice. But the book comes to life through five in-depth case studies featuring the use of novels, a biography, and a nonfiction historical text. In addition to demonstrating Novel Engineering projects in the classroom, the case studies let you practice thinking about what your own students' work could look like and how you would respond. You'll see that this approach doesn't require books outside your existing ELA or social studies curriculum or a specific building-materials kit. You'll also see that Novel Engineering can help you engage students in a powerful new way. As the authors write, "We have been encouraged by the excitement that students and teachers have shown for their work during Novel Engineering units. ... Students have taken ownership of their learning and are able to navigate the steps of the engineering design process, creating functional solutions to problems they have identified in texts.""--

The Tufts University Center for Engineering Education and Outreach (CEEO) strives to improve STEM education through engineering and believes every student should have the chance to engineer. Situated in Massachusetts, the first state to adopt engineering education at all levels in public schools (Massachusetts DOE, 2001), the CEEO supports the belief that engineering education starts in kindergarten and continues to develop throughout their K-12 schooling. The authors also believe that at the core of K-12 engineering is the Engineering Design Process (EDP). The purpose of introducing students to the EDP is to teach students that engineering is about organizing thoughts to improve decision making for the purpose of developing high quality solutions and/or products to problems. Three key concepts in successful implementation of the EDP are: (1) students are engineers; (2) teachers need to listen to their students; and (3) classroom environments need to change to properly enable learning through the EDP. Recently, the authors worked with the Massachusetts State Department of Education to produce a revised engineering design document that describes a learning progression for the EDP from kindergarten through high school. This white paper describes the high school portion of that document geared toward the activities or skills they associate with the EDP as defined by the current Massachusetts curriculum frameworks. This depiction of the EDP implies a cyclical, stepwise process that is rarely the case in solving real-world engineering problems. Oftentimes the task requires some jumping around from step to step. By adopting this slightly adjusted paradigm, students will recognize that the EDP does not rely upon rigid thinking, but provokes creative and outside-the-box thinking. (Contains 1 figure.).

"Introducing Engineering in K-8 Settings will arm you with the tools you need to incorporate engineering design into your classroom. Rather than prescribing a specific curriculum to follow, this book will help you engage your students with hands-on, open-ended engineering design problems that can be easily integrated into your existing classroom set up. Beginning with the basics of K-8 engineering and advancing to topics such as integrating engineering with other disciplines, documentation, and assessments; chapters will provide a how-to on creating open-ended engineering activities, design tasks, and projects that are reflective of the academic, social, emotional, developmental, and community goals of your students. An additional focus on ways to adapt these pedagogical approaches to meet the needs of all students, representative of racially, ethnically, socioeconomically, gender diverse populations, and students who receive special education services is included. Case studies and practical implementation strategies are presented alongside more than fifteen lesson plans, with tips on how to modify the tasks presented in the book to work with your classroom and students. This user-centered approach will also help you create your own engineering lessons that meet your individual classroom objectives and interests and be able to recognize and classify your students' engineering behaviors to support them in enacting their ideas. No matter your experience or comfort level, this book will be an invaluable resource for elementary and middle school science and technology teachers at all career stages who are looking to introduce engineering design to their students. Additional classroom resources can be found online at introducingengineering.org"--