00:00

Have you tried using the Engineering Design Process in your STEM classroom? What is it and what are the different stages of it? Why should you be teaching with the Engineering Design Process in elementary STEM? In this episode, I'll be answering all of your Engineering Design Process questions, so you can get started implementing it into your lessons. 

00:56

Before we dive into today's episode, I have a free Engineering Design Process poster and planning guide that you can download for your classroom. You can grab it at Naomi meredith.com/podcastEDP. I'll also link it in the show notes. A side note: EDP is short for Engineering Design Process poster. I may or may not use this acronym within this episode, but just so you know what I'm talking about, that's what EDP stands for. 

01:28

When I first started teaching K through five STEM, I actually had never heard of the Engineering Design Process. However, the more I started researching and developing my own curriculum, I quickly realized that this is a process that I definitely needed to be teaching in my STEM space. Today, I'm sharing with you how you can easily implement this within your lessons. 

01:51

First, let's go over what the Engineering Design Process is, and a snapshot of what it actually means. The Engineering Design Process is the real process that engineers use to build, test and create their designs. It's all about that iteration and testing it repeatedly. When you think about it, this process is the heart of trying lots of different ideas and failing, which is definitely something that we want to be teaching our students. STEM is a great place for it. So naturally, the Engineering Design Process has a perfect fit within your STEM classroom. And yes, this is applicable for Kindergarten on up. In fact, there actually are Next Generation Science Standards, NGSS, that are all about the Engineering Design Process. There is a set of these standards for K through two, and also a set for three through five.  If you use the Next Generation Science Standards, not only are classroom teachers going to be using the Engineering Design Process, but in your STEM space, you have the opportunity to use it too. 

03:12

I also get a lot of questions about whether or not the Engineering Design Process is replacing the scientific method, project based learning or PBL, and design thinking. In my opinion, you are not replacing those methods. Those are all different and important methods, which we can do future episodes on. I even have a few people in mind that can talk to you about some of those topics. The Engineering Design Process is its own thing, and has its own place alongside of these processes. It's definitely up to you if you want to teach with the Engineering Design Process all year long, which I typically do. Or maybe you want to mix it in with the scientific method, PBL, or design thinking. This is your call, or, if you're on a planning committee, what the committee wants to do, or what your administration is hoping for you to do. So this is just a another format and another way to teach these amazing STEM concepts to your students. 

04:18

Now, when you research the Engineering Design Process, there are a lot of different stages, but they pretty much are saying the same thing. So here's how I have broken it up into six stages for you to teach to your students. I'm also going to be talking about how you can teach with this method and give you a sample of how I break up these stages along with a sample lesson plan and how these stages are implemented along the way. The six stages that I have divided the Engineering Design Process into, which is in that free poster for you to download, is first ask what is the problem. Second, imagine what are the possible solutions. Third is the planning stage, so what could your solution look like? Fourth is the Create stage, so bring your plan to life. This is student's most favorite part. The fifth stage is experiment and improve meaning test your solution and make it better. Finally, the sixth stage is share what happened. 

05:23

Just like when you're thinking about the writing process, or even those other methods that I just talked about, these aren't one and done type of stages. These are things you can always go back to if something doesn't work or go back to a previous stage. I always tell my students this as well. I am teaching them in phases throughout the week. But if they're not done with this stage, they can continue in that place. Maybe they don't even get to that next stage? That's just where they're at in the process. Likewise, if a creation doesn't work, they can always go back to that planning stage, create a new one, and then go through the the creation and experimenting again. So these steps are not set in stone. They can't since they're very fluid. It is also good for students to have structure so they know where the project is going. It's not always just creating, which you can do. However, you are bringing more meaning into your lessons when planning with this process, and using the standards alongside it. 

06:31

Now that you have a basic understanding of what the Engineering Design Process is, let's talk about a sample structure that you can use in your classroom, and how you can teach each of the different stages. Currently, I teach K through five STEM five days a week with the same students for the entire week. I know in past episodes, like we talked about in episode 12, some of you teach STEM to all the kids in the school, but you only see that same group of kids once a week. You can break this up how it works best for you. So let's talk about sample structures for both. 

07:09

First, let's talk about if you'd see the kids five days a week in a row or something similar to that structure. On day one, I present students with the question. Now you can have students help develop this question with you, but I know in this special space, you are very limited for time. So I actually develop the question ahead of time based on the science standards that I want to target. If you're curious about how I actually get to the planning piece, make sure to listen to episode 14 where I discuss how to create your year long plan with the standards in mind. 

07:49

So we are in that ask stage and I asked students the question that we're trying to solve. Then we move on to the imagine. The imagine is where we are thinking of different possible solutions. This isn't actually their formal plan. This is the part where you want to tie in lots of different resources for kids to explore. This can be in the form of videos, websites, ebooks, like epic books, podcast, infographics, or real books. This is a time where students are exploring all of these different resources to help them gather ideas of what can work for their invention. This is also a great time to talk about the science behind the experiment. This can even be part of the research. So this is where you're really boosting up that background knowledge and getting kids excited for what they're hoping to create. On day two, this is where I might finish up some of that imagining, depending on the structure of how that's presented to kids. Sometimes it is more guided where I am sharing the information, and we are writing down our ideas together. But further along in the year, especially with the older students, the imagined stage is more independent, and they might have a graphic organizer where they're capturing their thoughts and accessing the resources on their own. 

09:16

Day two, we're finishing up that imagining and then we're really focusing on that plan. Plans can look different in various ways. We usually think of plans that can be a simple draw and label your plan type of thing. I recommend starting here. There are a lot of different ways that you can plan, which we will talk about in future episodes. So you can really build up the different planning methods when you use the Engineering Design Process. Day two students are working on that plan, maybe even have a shopping list, which we talked about in episode six where you're managing that maker money, and then they're ready when they come in on day three. See where they get into the create, experiment, and improve stage. This is where you can step back and see how kids are problem solving and trying to bring those plans to life. This is always our most exciting day. I always teach with the Engineering Design Process.  

10:20

Let me tell you how this paid off in my classroom. We were working on a STEM survival camp challenge, I believe it was fifth grade. We only had three days. I think it was something with this schedule where I only had three days with them. Anyway, I wanted to make sure they actually had time to create. So we did some imagining, and then I told them, okay, you can just talk about your plans totally fine. You can draw if you want. I'm not kidding you. Every single group decided they wanted to draw their plan. They were very thoughtful and were labeling. They were drawing more than one side, and they were really involved in that planning process. This was a proud teacher moment, I must say, because I didn't even force them to plan and they wanted to plan. 

11:11

Keep going, this process is a year long thing that you will continue to work on. You might get some whining at first, but you are the teacher, your job is to teach them and to help them research and gather ideas. STEM isn't just the creation part. There's some stuff you have to do before that, and hopefully your invention even makes sense. I feel like the creation part is the easiest part of your job. Getting kids to understand why they're doing things is going to make their projects even better. On day three, the kids are experimenting and improving. Moving on to day four, they're still creating and improving, but also consider giving them ways that they can improve their designs. Instead of saying, “Oh, just do this,” have a checklist that is related to the project, which can be very powerful. The checklist could be things they may or may not have to do, but it will help them think about their designs in a different way, which we'll talk about in the example lesson I have in just a little bit. 

12:20

Finally, on the last day, they are doing any finishing touches and sharing their work, which could be just talking to other groups about what they did. My personal favorite is to create videos and pictures within Seesaw, and having reflection questions where they can talk about what went well, what would they try again, and what was actually challenging for them. This is a great way to be reflective and really think about the entire process throughout the week. 

12:52

Now, if you don't see kids five consecutive days in a row, here's how I would break up the Engineering Design Process for you. Day one, you can start with a question, the ask, do a quick imagine stage where you are guiding, so it might not be as independent for the kids. But you're still providing that information for them to build some background knowledge, and then dive into the planning. That way when kids come back the second week with you, they have a plan that they've already started. You could watch another video to trigger their memories and then students can begin planning and creating. On day three final day they can finish creating their designs. They can of course experiment and improve when they're creating. Then they can share their work some of the ways that I discussed earlier. You're going to actually want to condense things even shorter, but you definitely can still fit this process in. It just takes a little modification and careful planning on your part. 

13:56

Let's talk about an example of how I actually use these stages with a third grade lesson in my STEM classroom. I picked third grade because it's right in the middle. You can definitely flex this lesson up or you can flex this lesson down. I do use the Engineering Design Process with K through five. So I want you to visualize how this could work in my classroom, but also in yours as well. We started off on day one with the ask: how can you create an invention that will reduce the impacts of flooding? This connects to the NGSS standard that is specific to this third grade unit. From there we went into the imagined stage where I had a variety of resources for kids to explore to see how flooding is actually a problem and different ways that people have already been able to and are continuing to solve the problem. Now flooding isn't going away, but there are some inventions already out there that I wanted kids to see. So I included pictures and videos for them to explore, to see what inventions are working and ways that they could maybe create something similar, but also trigger ways that they can improve those designs that are already out there. 

15:17

We also talked about what flooding is and how it can be a part of severe weather. I also provided them with links to some websites about different places in history where flooding was a huge problem, what the effects were, and success stories within those pieces of history. This was all within our day one. We completed some of the imagining on day two. On day two, once that imagining piece was in place, we focused on their plan. Students used the imagining information to help them develop their plan of how they could create the invention that will help reduce the impact of flooding. 

16:10

We did talk about reducing instead of stopping the impact.  We discussed how they could get it to where it's not ruining a home and how to slow it down. Students were thoughtfully planning their designs by drawing, labeling and explaining how it works. I had the kids still plan on paper for this project. But then I had them take a picture and add it to Seesaw where they could record their voice or type their answers to the questions I asked. On day three we dove into the create stage. For this project, they received a little house made of paper that they could tape onto a plastic block. They also received a plastic bucket that they could build their design in. When we experimented towards the end of the week, that's when we added in the water. 

17:06

This project also involved the maker menu that I talked about in episode six. So make sure to go and check that out because that is a game changer for this lesson. Day three is all about having that plan, grabbing and chopping materials and starting to create the invention and their plans. Day four is a little more shopping and more experimenting and improving. I also give them a modification checklist where they can look to see how they might want to improve their designs. This one is a little bit different because they are actually testing their design with water. So not only does it include different modifications that they can use in their design, but it also includes what their guesss is as to what will happen. There's another column for what actually happened. You don't have to do this for all of your checklists. But when it makes sense, having a before and after type of checklist is really helpful. Kids can think forward as to how their invention will respond to this situation. On the final day is our real experiment, so we add in the water. I do have the kids take a picture or video of their design again in Seesaw to show what it looks like before and after it gets wet. 

18:31

Students are having such a blast not only looking at their designs, but noticing how other designs work in the class. So it's some friendly competition. But it's just so much fun to see how their inventions work. When we're finished and clean up, there are some reflection questions. I use the same questions all year, so students are used to that format, but they have different responses because the projects change. The three questions that I like students to reflect on either through writing, typing, recording their voice or a video are: I am proud of; if I were to try this challenge again, I would change; and they explain something that was challenging for them. So within five days, we get through all of this content, we clean up, and there aren't any projects left in my room. But it's cool how we can zone in on the impact of floods, and go through the Engineering Design Process together. 

19:35

As a recap for today, we talked about a whole lot. Let's review everything we discussed. First, I explained what the Engineering Design Process is and each of its stages. Next, we talked about how you can teach using the different stages depending on when you see your classes. Finally, I shared with you an example lesson on how I use the Engineering Design Process from start to finish. 

20:04

Over the next few episodes of the podcast, I'm going to be diving deeper into those different stages of the Engineering Design Process, and share with you different ways that I like to implement each stage. This can really impact your planning and make it meaningful and it will keep you from doing the same thing for every single lesson. You're mixing it up and keeping kids engaged. Also, don't forget to grab your free Engineering Design Process poster and Planning Guide, which will be linked in the show notes so you can definitely dive on in and get started. You can grab that at Naomi meredith.com/podcastEDP.