Embedded Files
The Engineering Process
8/4 - Day 1: Paper Skyscraper Challenge
8/4 - Day 1: Paper Skyscraper Challenge
What did they do?
What did they do?
Your student worked in a group to build a paper skyscraper.
Goal:
Goal:
Build the tallest skyscraper
Requirements:
Requirements:
Only 10 sheets of paper
no glue, tape, or any other item but the 10 sheets of paper
The tower must be free-standing
Mr. Linn will take the measurement
Family discussion questions:
Family discussion questions:
Tell me about your STEM project?
Can you describe to me what your tower looked like? How tall was it? How did you build it?
How did you come up with your idea?
Do you feel like you were successful?
If you were asked to do it again, what would you do differently?
8/5 - Day 2: Water Tower Challenge (Introduce and Develop)
8/5 - Day 2: Water Tower Challenge (Introduce and Develop)
What did they do?
What did they do?
Your student will learn about how municipal water service works as a subject for their next engineering challenge. They will work in a group to build a water tower concept.
Goal:
Goal:
Build the most efficient water tower. Efficiency is calculated by dividing the height of the tower by the number of pieces of paper used
Requirements:
Requirements:
10-30 sheets of paper
Tape may be used
The tower must be free-standing
The tower must hold the can for at least 60 seconds to be valid
Mr. Linn will take the measurement
Family discussion questions:
Family discussion questions:
Can you tell me about what you did in STEM today?
I thought you built a tower yesterday, why is this different?
What ideas from the last project will apply to this one?
What new ideas can you add to this one?
Why do you think your design is going to work?
Where do you think the weak point in your design is?
8/6 - Day 3: Water Tower Challenge (Build & Test)
8/6 - Day 3: Water Tower Challenge (Build & Test)
What did they do?
What did they do?
Your student continued developing and building their water tower project with their group. They may test their towers at certain points to see if it holds the can before our final testing tomorrow
Goal:
Goal:
Build the most efficient water tower. Efficiency is calculated by dividing the height of the tower by the number of pieces of paper used
Requirements:
Requirements:
10-30 sheets of paper
Tape may be used
The tower must be free-standing
The tower must hold the can for at least 60 seconds to be valid
Mr. Linn will take the measurement
Family discussion questions:
Family discussion questions:
Can you tell me about what you did in STEM today?
How did you build your tower?
Did you have to remake any part of it?
What was the hardest part of building it?
How tall was your tower and was it able to hold the can?
What is part of your design or building that didn't work well? What is the weak point that you could improve next time?
8/7 - Day 4: Water Tower Challenge (Final testing)
8/7 - Day 4: Water Tower Challenge (Final testing)
What did they do?
What did they do?
Your student finished building their water tower and tested it.
Goal:
Goal:
Build the most efficient water tower. Efficiency is calculated by dividing the height of the tower by the number of pieces of paper used
Requirements:
Requirements:
10-30 sheets of paper
Tape may be used
The tower must be free-standing
The tower must hold the can for at least 60 seconds to be valid
Mr. Linn will take the measurement
Family discussion questions:
Family discussion questions:
How did your tower go? Was it able to hold the can?
How did you figure out the most efficient tower?
Why would you not want to just use like 100 sheets of paper?
What did the most efficient tower look like?
What improvement would you make to yours next time?
8/8 - Day 5: Reflection and Composition Notebooks
8/8 - Day 5: Reflection and Composition Notebooks
What did they do?
What did they do?
Your student completed their tower reflection worksheets and we introduced our STEAM notebooks
Family discussion questions:
Family discussion questions:
Why did Mr. Linn want you to have a composition book?
What did you put in your book so far?
8/11 - Day 6: The Engineering Process
8/11 - Day 6: The Engineering Process
What did they do?
What did they do?
Your student learned the steps of the engineering process and reflected on how they naturally went through those steps without even thinking about it on their first 2 projects.
Family discussion questions:
Family discussion questions:
I heard you learned about the engineering process today, what can you tell me about it?
Now that you know the process, would you have done anything differently when you built your towers?
What step do you think is probably the hardest?
Why would you have to go back and do part of it again?
Why you would want to communicate results even if you didn't meet all the requirements?
What do you think is good about this process?
Do you want to be an engineer?
(if no) Why do you think he's making you learn this if you don't want to be an engineer?
(if yes) If you're not engineering stuff yet, why do you think he's asking you to follow this process?
8/12 - Day 7: Attack the castle! - Day 1: Project Introduction
8/12 - Day 7: Attack the castle! - Day 1: Project Introduction
What did they do?
What did they do?
Your student was introduced to the new project: Attack the castle! The students are presented with a problem to build a launcher system to attack a castle from a distance. Their launcher system must launch scale model boulders into a scale model castle. They will work with their shoulder partner, applying the engineering process to solve the problem.
This day introduced the problem statement, presented some background information, specified the requirements, and gave the pairs an opportunity to do some background research.
Family discussion questions:
Family discussion questions:
What is your new STEM project?
What have you learned in your background research?
Do you and your partner have any ideas yet?
What are the requirements you need to meet to be successful?
8/13 - Day 8: Attack the castle! - Day 2: Brainstorm & BOM
8/13 - Day 8: Attack the castle! - Day 2: Brainstorm & BOM
What did they do?
What did they do?
Your students brainstormed, evaluated their ideas, and chose the best one based on their background knowledge and research. They developed the idea further and created a BOM (Bill of Materials) and were given those materials to begin construction
Family discussion questions:
Family discussion questions:
Can you tell me about your launcher you came up with?
Why do you think that idea was the best one you had?
What was one of the ideas you didn't choose?
Mr. Linn said you needed to make a BOM, what is that?
8/14 - Day 9: Attack the castle! - Build and first testing
8/14 - Day 9: Attack the castle! - Build and first testing
What did they do?
What did they do?
The students used their newly acquired materials to build the first iteration of their launcher concept. During the build process, they tested their prototypes in a variety of ways, some by just pushing down, pulling back, or rotating things, some pairs took their launchers to the demo area to try, some tried just at their desks. As long as they got information from their tests to help them continue development, it counts as a valid test.
Family discussion questions:
Family discussion questions:
Can you explain to me how you built your launcher?
As you were building it, did you make any changes?
How did you make sure what you were building is going to work?
8/15 - Day 10: Attack the castle! - Refinement loop
8/15 - Day 10: Attack the castle! - Refinement loop
What did they do?
What did they do?
Students entered the refinement loop of the engineering process where they test their solution against the requirements, gather data from their tests, and make changes by going back to either "Background research", "Brainstorming", "Designing and Prototyping", or "retesting" solution depending on the results of their tests. This loop continues until their launcher meets all the requirements.
Family discussion questions:
Family discussion questions:
How many times did you test your launcher today?
Has your launcher met all the requirements? Which ones have not been met yet?
What do you think you need to do to make it work?
8/18 - Day 11: Attack the castle! - Public Testing
8/18 - Day 11: Attack the castle! - Public Testing
What did they do?
What did they do?
Students had 20 minutes to do final adjustments and refinement loops before the attack begins.
They then all had the opportunity to test their launcher in class to see if it was successful.
Family discussion questions:
Family discussion questions:
Did your launcher meet all the requirements? Which ones did it not?
Which launchers were the most successful?
Did you see any ideas that you thought were really good that you didn't think of? What were they?
If you had one more day, what would you do to make sure your launcher better meet all the requirements?
8/19 - Day 12: The Engineering Process in Action
8/19 - Day 12: The Engineering Process in Action
What did they do?
What did they do?
Your student watched a person go through the engineering process and identified the steps to see how it was applied.
Family discussion questions:
Family discussion questions:
What happened in the video you watched?
What was one of the revisions that he needed to make?
Do you think he would have achieved success if he didn't follow the engineering process?
8/21 - Day 13: Introduction to Technical Writing
8/21 - Day 13: Introduction to Technical Writing
What did they do?
What did they do?
Your student was given the requirements and grading rubric for the technical writing assignment. They are required to explain how the engineering process was applied as they completed one of the projects in this unit (paper skyscraper, water tower, or launcher). If they were absent more than 1 day on any of the projects, they will choose one of the engineering process in action videos posted in google classroom to explain the process.
They will be graded on 2 standards based on this rubric:
Family discussion questions:
Family discussion questions:
Which of the topics did you choose to write about?
Which step of the engineering process was the most challenging part?
8/22 - Day 14: Flow Maps
8/22 - Day 14: Flow Maps
What did they do?
What did they do?
Your student learned how to make an effective flow map and used their reflection sheets to make a flow map of the engineering process with details about each step. Some steps were done multiple times because they were part of the refinement loop. While there's not a minimum requirement, the flow map should have about 50+ different details spread throughout the steps to have enough detail to explain the process in detail.
Family discussion questions:
Family discussion questions:
What is your background knowledge? What things did you learn to help you make decisions during this project?
How many times did you test your solution to the problem you're writing about?
8/25 - Day 15: Converting Flow Maps to rough writing
8/25 - Day 15: Converting Flow Maps to rough writing
What did they do?
What did they do?
Your student used their flow map to write simple sentences about their process. This draft is not intended to an essay and will not be graded, but is a crucial step to ensuring student success. The short simple sentences will make it easy for students to ensure the content of their writing meets the criteria, organize their information into paragraphs, and edit out unnecessary information before focusing on transitions, complex sentences, and readability factors. Although there is no limit, they will likely need between 30 and 50 sentences or more to fully explain their process
Family discussion questions:
Family discussion questions:
Why is Mr. Linn making you write these simple sentences like this instead of paragraphs?
Which section do you think has the best information? Why do you think that?
8/27 - Day 16: Rough draft to 2nd Draft
8/27 - Day 16: Rough draft to 2nd Draft
What did they do?
What did they do?
Your student will take their sentences, organize them into paragraph groups and enhance the sentences with more details, transitions, and create a variety of sentence structures to write their 2nd draft.
Family discussion questions:
Family discussion questions:
How difficult was it to write paragraphs once you had the simple sentences from your rough draft?
Which details did you have to add that you didn't remember before?
8/29 - Day 17: Peer review & Revisions
8/29 - Day 17: Peer review & Revisions
What did they do?
What did they do?
Your student will share their writing with a peer and review the work of a peer. They will add comments to the paper identifying errors in writing conventions, sentences or paragraphs that are confusing, opportunities to add technical vocabulary, and parts that need more information. The peer reviewers will provide suggestions for how to correct those issues.
Family discussion questions:
Family discussion questions:
Who was reviewing your paper?
What kind of errors or issues did you find in your peers paper?
What kind of feedback did you get (or do you expect to get) about your writing?
9/2 - Day 18: Final Drafts
9/2 - Day 18: Final Drafts
What did they do?
What did they do?
Your student will consider the comments made by their peer reviewer as they make their final revisions and edits to their papers. Many students will ask me for suggestions as well and I will add comments and suggestions. They will apply the comments as they see fit, determining which to follow and which to not. Once completed, they will turn in their final draft to be graded based on the grading rubric.
When grading, they will get a copy of the rubric that I have graded them on and feedback for how to improve their writing (even if they got all 4's). If they get a 2, they must do revisions and resubmit it for grading. If they get a 3, they do not have to, but can. They will have to sent a comment on the assignment asking me to re-grade it when they are finished revising.
Family discussion questions:
Family discussion questions:
What grade do you think you will get on your writing assignment? Why do you think you will get that grade?
Which indicator do you think you will do the best on? Why?
Image credits:
"Peace Bridge Calgary Alberta." by Bernard Spragg is marked with CC0 1.0.
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