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I am the most uncomfortable with engineering, or the 'E' in STEAM. To me engineering means building things in the classroom. Within the context of STEAM that means building to problem solve or answer a question. To not necessarily have a set of instructions and to allow students to explore, revise as they are constructing something.

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I am the most uncomfortable with engineering, or the 'E' in STEAM. To me engineering means building things in the classroom. Within the context of STEAM that means building to problem solve or answer a question. To not necessarily have a set of instructions and to allow students to explore, revise as they are constructing something.

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"Engineering" to me means constructing or building something. That is a relatively weak skill area for me. I can be a little impatient. I think I might be more concerned with the outcome of my students building something correctly and giving the right directions so that something 'works' than the process of allowing the to try, fail, try again and have different outcomes.

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"Engineering" to me means constructing or building something. That is a relatively weak skill area for me. I can be a little impatient. I think I might be more concerned with the outcome of my students building something correctly and giving the right directions so that something 'works' than the process of allowing the to try, fail, try again and have different outcomes.

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From Simple Machines to Life Skills

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Elementary Engineering: From Simple Machines to Life Skills

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Engineering in Middle School Classrooms 

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Engineering in Middle School Classrooms 

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Engineering design is the method that engineers use to identify and solve problems. It has been described and mapped out in many ways, but all descriptions include some common attributes:

Engineering design is a process. This powerful approach to problem solving is flexible enough to work in almost any situation. Engineers learn important information about both the problem and possible solutions at each step or phase of the process.
Learn about different models of engineering design.
Engineering design is purposeful. The process always begins with an explicit goal. If it were a journey, it would be one with a specific destination - not a random sightseeing trip.

Engineering design is "design under constraint." Designers must choose solutions that include the most desired features and fewest negative characteristics. But they must stay the limitations of the given scenario, which could include time, cost, and the physical limits of tools and materials.

Engineering design is systematic and iterative. It is a process that includes steps that can be repeated, although not always in the same order. Steps include things like planning, modeling, testing, and improving designs.

Engineering design is a social, collaborative enterprise. This process is often done in small teams that include people with different kinds of knowledge and experience. Designers are continuously communicating with clients, team members, and others.

Browse through LinkEngineering's collection of resources on engineering design to learn more about the process and its real world applications.

Science is commonly described as the study of the natural world through observation and experimentation. In PreK-12 settings, it usually refers to "natural" sciences: physics, chemistry, biology, and earth, space, and environmental sciences. Like engineers, scientists also use a reasoning process to solve problems: scientific inquiry.

Science inquiry and engineering design use similar cognitive tools such as brainstorming, reasoning by analogy, mental models, and visual representations. Scientists use these tools to ask questions about the world around us and try to deduce rules that explain the patterns we see. Engineers use them to modify the world to satisfy people's needs and wants.

"Scientists discover the world that exists; engineers create the world that never was."

Theodore von Karman, co-founder of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

In the real world today, engineering and science cannot be neatly separated. Scientific knowledge informs engineering design, and many scientific advances would not be possible without technological tools developed by engineers.

Explore the differences between engineering and science practices through resources available on this site.

All PreK-12 engineering experiences involve some form of the engineering design process. However, the process does not look the same for every experience. Numerous engineering education programs for K-12 students have been developed in recent years, and many include their own version of engineering design.
Produced by Washington STEM
Engineering design also tends to be described differently for students of different ages. Older students are often provided more specifics and challenged with more complex problems. Browse through LinkEngineering's collection of original and reviewed lesson plans to see the variety of ways that engineering design is used in learning at different grade levels.
Produced by Fairfax County Schools Browse through LinkEngineering's collection of teaching examples
to see engineering education in action.
There is no single right way
to implement the engineering design process.

For example, the LinkEngineer homepage displays a version of the engineering design process developed by Engineering is Elementary (EiE) at the Museum of Science, Boston, for grades K-5. This five-step model is appealing because it is simple and uses terms children are familiar with rather than technical jargon to describe the process. Learn about different models of engineering design. What works well for one classroom or after-school program may not as well in another.

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Engineering design is the method that engineers use to identify and solve problems. It has been described and mapped out in many ways, but all descriptions include some common attributes: Engineering design is a process. This powerful approach to problem solving is flexible enough to work in almost any situation.

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1. ELA- Incorporating read alouds focused on engineering. This is a great way to incorporate engineering  into my ELA period by switching the content of read aloud to books about engineering that are on this list.

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1. ELA- Incorporating read alouds focused on engineering. This is a great way to incorporate engineering  into my ELA period by switching the content of read aloud to books about engineering that are on this list.

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In answer to your question about other picture books about engineering...

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Kate, Other books that I use in STEAM and engineering K-12 outreach are: The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires (2014) Engineering Elephants! by Emily Hunt & Michelle Pantoya (2010) Engineering the ABCs: How Engineers Shape Our World by Patty O'Brien Novak (2009) Rocks, Jeans and Busy ...

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Science- I think the easiest way to incorporate engineering and design principles is within science curriculum. One activity is the : Pipe Cleaner Electric Circuit

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Need electricity activities? I'm so fascinated by all of the ongoing changes and additions to our science standards.

We're teaching our students how to analyze and interpret data, investigate, participate in formal arguments, create models of their thinking, and just so many other areas that focus on developing critical thinking skills.

While our standards are definitely forward-thinking and incorporate so many areas of life skills, as the teacher, it can be challenging to create lessons and activities that always provide real-world experiences and scenarios for our students.

Electricity and magnetism is definitely one of those areas that really require real-world connections in order to make sense to our students.

I've created some simple resources I'd love to share with you that will provide those real-world experiences and will help build the foundation for a classroom full of engineers! 🙂

Electricity Activities

This bundle includes 5 different products to help you teach your electricity unit!

Some of the topics included are insulators and conductors, circuits, magnets and electromagnets, energy transformations, parallel and series circuits, as well as static electricity!

Students are given multiple different questions and activities such as drag-and-drop, short answer, vocabulary practice, and drawing different types of circuits.

The questions really concentrate on tying the learned information to real-world connections.

For example, an area of the Electrical Energy Transformation resource focuses on students identifying the energy transformation between an electrical outlet and a lamp or a stove.

One area of the Electromagnets and Magnets resource focuses on comparing and contrasting the two, as well as identifying different objects around the house that are magnetic or not magnetic.
These topics can be tricky, but when we apply the information to relatable ideas and experiences, it's so much easier for our students to make connections!
5 more products coming at you in this bundle! 🙂

These interactive notebooks also include the topics of circuits, conductors and insulators, electrical energy, magnets and electromagnets, as well as static electricity.

Similar topics as the Google Classroom bundle, but all completely different activities to add to your Electricity and Magnetism unit. Don't forget these can be converted into digital activities, as well!

One of my favorite resources in this bundle is the Conductors and Insulators Notebook. I feel like this topic can be a challenging one for students to understand the difference between the two. This notebook gives examples and explanations for each meaning, brainstorming opportunities, as well as short answer questions for students to elaborate on their own thinking.

You can also conduct a short experiment with your students using this specific activity by building a circuit with a lightbulb, battery, and three pieces of wire.

This experiment will help with identifying the difference between an insulator and a conductor!

These interactive notebooks all come with answer keys, as well as differentiated options to best fit every students' ability level.

Pipe Cleaner Circuits

One of my favorite electricity experiments that also incorporates STEAM learning is creating pipe cleaner circuits!

All you need is pipe cleaners (at least 2 per student), a small coin battery, 1 LED light, and a l ittle duct tape for each student! Prior to this activity, be sure you've discussed with your students what a circuit is, as well as the difference between insulators and conductors.

Students will first need to remove some of the "fuzzy layering" from the pipe cleaner to expose the wires underneath. There will have to be enough exposed to be tied around the LED light.

Next, allow the students to create whatever shape or design they prefer. Maybe they can bend their pipe cleaners to resemble a flower, shamrock, or even an Easter egg!

Next, take the positive lead of your LED (it's the longer lead of the two), and twist it around the end of one pipe cleaner. The other end of the pipe cleaner will be attached to the positive side of the battery. You can attach it with your duct tape! Following this, the other pipe cleaner will need to be attached to the negative lead of the LED on one end, and the other end will go on the negative side of the coin battery.

Your LED should be lit now! If it's not, be sure to check all of your connections and ensure that the positive LED lead is connected to the pipe cleaner whose end is connected to the positive side of the coin battery, and vice versa with the negatives. You can make this activity more challenging by adding in more pipe cleaners to the design. Have a group discussion on what you would need to do in order to keep the circuit complete after adding multiple pipe cleaners!

They'll be true engineers by the end of your activity and discussion. 🙂

Magic Dollar

Although it's not an experiment to really study how electricity and magnetism occur, it's an awesome way to tie magnetism into social studies!

Did you know dollar bills were magnetic? All you need for this experiment is a dollar bill and a magnet!

Fold a dollar bill in half and place it on a flat surface. Place your magnet right next to the ink on the bill, slowly pulling the bill up. This is a great way to get your students thinking about why having magnetized ink on money is a good thing (i.e. reducing counterfeiting).

Electricity and Magnetism Read Alouds to go with electricity activities

When teaching a challenging topic, sometimes the best thing you can do for your students is to give them a read aloud on the topic - Something light, fun, and relatable to help introduce or supplement your instruction.

Don't ever discredit the power of a good read-aloud.

1. What Makes a Magnet? by Franklyn M. Branley

2. Magnets Push, Magnets Pull by David A. Adler

3. You Wouldn't Want to Live Without Electricity! by Ian Graham

4. 25 Uses of Electricity (4th Grade) by Baby Professor

5. Electrical Wizard: How Nikola Tesla Lit Up the World by Elizabeth Rusch

I know teaching electricity and magnetism in engaging ways can be tricky. Sometimes it can take a lot of supplies and expenses! But I hope these resources help you plan an affordable, interactive, and engineer-building lesson! Enjoy! 🙂

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Here are a few of my favorites (Amazon Affiliate links):

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Teaching Engineering with Electricity Activities - Glitter in Third

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Need electricity activities? I'm so fascinated by all of the ongoing changes and additions to our science standards. We're teaching our students how to analyze and interpret data, investigate, participate in formal arguments, create models of their thinking, and just so many other areas that focus on developing critical thinking skills.

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By Mihir Ravel and Cary Sneider

Streaming digital video is one of the most remarkable technologies to emerge from the Internet. Of special note for education, it has supported an explosion of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) tutorial videos that have enabled self-guided learning across an amazing range of subjects and skills. However, searching for just the right video to illustrate a certain idea or skill for your students can also lead down numerous irrelevant paths, siphoning off valuable time better spent on other classroom needs. To optimize the value of this resource, it makes sense for us to pool our resources, and share the best videos we've found. LinkEngineering provides a great platform for this.

As a first effort, we spent some time looking for useful videos to illustrate the engineering design process for students in middle or high school grades. We searched YouTube using a number of different phrases including "The Engineering Design Process," "What Do Engineers Do?" and "Design Thinking." Each of these yielded quite a number of possibilities. Not all were suitable for students, as some were aimed at business leaders or educators, and many were not very engaging for students or just silly. Focusing on videos that a middle or high school teacher might show as part of a unit on engineering, we came up with the following examples. You can find more engineering videos on the LinkEngineering resource page and also the LinkEngineering YouTube Channel that features playlists on a variety of engineering topics.

Engineering Design:

The Engineering Design Process: A Taco Party (3:37)

A short, animated and colorful video suitable for all ages from elementary student to adult, but particularly lively for students. It illustrates the EDP applied to designing and implementing an impromptu party for friends! (Based on NGSS 3-5-ETS1-1: "Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or a want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.")

Engineering Design Process from TeachEngineering 1:46

The team at TeachEngineering created this short overview of the engineering design process to support the use of the over 1,500 free STEM lesson plans in their digital library.

The Deep Dive, Part 1 (9:54), Part 2 (7:33), and Part 3 (4:36)

Although it is nearly 20 years old, this Nightline television program is still a favorite demonstration of how teams of designers define and solve problems to meet people's needs. In the video, a team from the design firm Ideo redesigns the grocery cart.

The Design Thinking Process (3:56)

From Stanford Univeristy's D-School, this illustrated overview provides a simple example of the five steps of the design thinking process: 1) empathize with people's needs; 2) define the problem; 3) ideate to come up with different solutions; 4) prototype the most promising solutions; and 5) test to see if your idea with actual users to see if it works to solve the problem.

The Engineering Process: Crash Course Kids #12.2 (5:16)

Sabrina, a young woman with a lively style and a good diversity role model, clearly explains the EDP using various examplea of engineering objects and engineers such as Alexander Graham Bell, Gustav Eiffel, and Willis Carrier. Well suited for middle and high school students, and also families for informal education and outreach.

Engineering:

During our hunt for videos to illustrate the Engineering Design Process, we came across other videos that do a nice job of describing what engineering is all about-just not the engineering design process. These also play an important role in an introductory unit on engineering.

What's an Engineer? Crash Course Kids #12.1 (4:29)

Sabrina, explains the who/what/why of engineers, their types, and the impact of their work on society. Examples ranging from refrigerators to cars to cellphones are illustrated with animations and images.

NASA for Kids: Intro to Engineering (2:42)

Quick overview of the engineering design process illustrated with images of NASA activities and men and women having a great time on the job.

What Is Engineering? (6:20)

High production values and short comments by high school and college youth provide a quick overview of the wide range of projects that engineers work on and dispels some of the myths. For example, role models point out that you don't have to be a wiz at science and math, and engineers are not nerds.

Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship (33:44)

At 33 minutes this introduction to engineering is a bit long, but worth the time. Diane Amanti, a student of economics and management at MIT and several other role models describe the value of engineering to meet peoples' needs. At key points the video pauses so that students can discuss issues before continuing.

What are your Favorites?

We invite readers to contribute other favorite videos on this topic that you've found so we can build up a bank of pre-viewed resources suitable for our students. Tell us how you use STEM videos to teach engineering in the comments.

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Engineering Videos for the Classroom: Engineering Design

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By Mihir Ravel and Cary Sneider Streaming digital video is one of the most remarkable technologies to emerge from the Internet. Of special note for education, it has supported an explosion of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) tutorial videos that have enabled self-guided learning across an amazing range of subjects and skills.

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3. Social Studies- One interesting way to incorporate engineering into social studies curriculum is setting up a lego or block center where students can replicate/build the famous structures that they are learning about in social studies. In 4th grade students would build structures in New York like famous bridges, the Statue of Liberty, or the Empire State building.

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3. Social Studies- One interesting way to incorporate engineering into social studies curriculum is setting up a lego or block center where students can replicate/build the famous structures that they are learning about in social studies. In 4th grade students would build structures in New York like famous bridges, the Statue of Liberty, or the Empire State building.

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Make a Book of World Structures for Your Block Center

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Create a book of structures for the block center, whether in kindergarten, preschool, or at home. Perfect for exploring STEM concepts and inspiring children as they create and build in the block center. Includes a link to a free printable.