Do you find it difficult to introduce a confusing process to elementary students? The engineering design process is difficult to introduce to elementary students due to its complexity. Here are a few ways that the engineering design process can be introduced to elementary students.
The Design Process Steps
The engineering design process has six steps. The first step in the engineering design process is to ask the student to identify the problem. Imagine is the second step of the process, where the student is tasked with thinking about solutions to the problem and researching ways to solve that problem. Planning is the third step in the engineering design process. This step has students narrow their list of ideas to about three and begin to make their final decision and sketches of that design. Create is the fourth step in the process where students create a model that fits with their design from the planning step. Test is the fifth step. This is where the students collect data and test the design, then analyze the data and the strengths and weaknesses of the design. Improvement is the final step where students reflect on their results to make their design better.
How to Help Students with the Design Process
The students should always be engaged with the material. Introduce the engineering design process to the students by giving them examples or a video that they can watch. NASA has an introduction video that explains the engineering design process and videos for each step of the process. NASA also has activity guides to assist teachers in teaching the process to students for grades K-2, 3-5, and 6-8. Additionally, there are numerous videos that are online that teachers can show to the students to help them understand the engineering design process. Teach Engineering has a whole curriculum that can help teachers when teaching the engineering design process.
Encourage the students to use the engineering design process with the use of projects. There are sources for teachers to use to access project ideas. Students can use the engineering design process to build a balloon car. Projects like these will help students learn and experience what it is like to use this process as a way of thinking. Another project that students can do would be the egg drop project. This project has students use the engineering design process to build a device to prevent the egg from breaking when it is dropped. Students would need raw eggs, egg cartons, packing, recyclable materials, cardboard, cotton balls, straws, pipe cleaners, wooden skewers, rubber bands, string and plastic bags if they want parachutes, and test eggs which could be plastic eggs or hard-boiled eggs. Once students have built their design, the design will need to be dropped from a high location. There are plenty of examples of projects that teachers can use in their classroom to help the students understand the engineering design process.
Written by Lee Metoyer
