CONNECTING STORIES
Essential question: How can we have fun and learn about many
subjects?
Stories can be found in Fictional Literature as well as Social Studies and History.
Using Bloom's higher order thinking questions in an example with Goldilocks |
Categories that could be used for a lesson plan outline Outline |
Other examples: |
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The core idea of the approach is that engineering need not “stand alone” in the curriculum, but can and should leverage other curricular elements, in particular literature and social studies/history stories. |
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Outcome of this section: Looking to find a Design Challenge that one of the characters have that we can design a product or process to help them. |
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Getting Started:
"Engineering design challenges" are created by actionable items in the story and lead to inquiry based team projects that have a design theme. As an example, in the story "Island of the Blue Dolphins", the village leaves canoes on the side of a hill for escaping a potential attack. The heroine in the story has a difficult time getting one of them down the hill and into the water. A "design challenge" for the students could be to design a system to make it easier for her to lower the canoe. |
We begin to enhance the learning process by using the engineering design methodology as a connector between literature, science & mathematics. Within this process is an infusion of thinking skill strategies, such as creative and critical thinking, questions and meta-cognitive reflection. The concept uses the existing comfort level of the elementary teachers and the student’s natural engineering abilities.
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Pre-existing
skills needed by the students: Understand the design process and what engineers do. · What science are we going to learn or have we just finished. · How to work as a team (peer interaction). · Students tutoring other students.
Are we solving the right problem? “if I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it” Albert Einstein
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Starts with viewing through the “Engineering Lens” The students and teachers should focus on thinking like an engineer when reading the literature. Questions of the story line, author and characters around the design of a product or process for society should be the instrument to begin. We should invite them to ask creative questions, make diverse observations, explore multiple viewpoints, reflect on their thinking process and seek personal connections of the literature. Examples: Why is this a special moment for the character in the story? How can we as engineers, created something for the characters in the story that will make their actions better?
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Approach: A teacher normal engages the students with the literature they are reading by asking skillful questions and using meta-cognitive reflection to bring out interesting areas of the story line. What we are adding is an engineering lens on the process to focus those questions from an engineering designer’s viewpoint.
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Lesson
design: team-teaching and teachers focusing on their own
intelligence strength; using all or several of the
intelligence in lessons; asking students their opinions on
how best to learn. Our current education places no importance on even knowing the individual passions, or interests, of our students, and most teachers don't ask – not necessarily because they don’t care, but because they are so occupied with all the other required tasks (such as teaching for the tests) that they feel they have no time. But if we lack the time to find out who our students really are and what they like, it is hard to create an education that interests them.
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Differentiated Learning
What’s their learning style, Do they bring pre-conceived thoughts to the classroom? Everything we teach should also be matched with a clear answer to the student’s constant question of “Why am I learning this?” Students should be taught to immediately use what they learn to effect outcomes in the world, and change it for the better. For example, they can use their learning to design a school of the future, or to redesign their current school. They can use the languages they learn to work directly with foreign students. They can learn to perform professional energy and environmental audits of local businesses. They can use their knowledge and skills to create Public Service Announcements for local TV and radio stations.
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Look for conflicts, changes in the story line and places
where a new item could help one of the characters.
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Teacher Strategies Engage the students in the story by using questions that the students identify with some design challenges. As the facilitator, the requirements can be added to for steering the direction of what the design challenge solution has to do.
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Show the similarities of the design process and reading and writing. | Literacy Extensions: | ||||||
Social Studies/ History
In our historical past their have been many problems individuals and society faced. Using the design process, students will design an artifact or process to help solve the issue.
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Attitude: An open mind is playful and willing to be silly because the best ideas are often hidden within our minds away from our watchful judgmental selves. The free flow of conflicting ideas is essential for creative thinking. |
Look for
changes in the story where the character is put into a
different position, something changes or a statement is made
that you can see opportunities to develop a product or
provide a solution. ![]() |
Starting with questions If the design challenges don’t jump out to you or your class, a good way to start is by using the 5 W’s (Who, When, Where, What, Why) plus How in question format to begin. As an example you can ask yourself the following questions:
Students need questions to turn on their intellectual engines and they need to generate questions from our questions to get their thinking to go somewhere. Thinking is of no use unless it goes somewhere, and again, the questions we ask determine where our thinking goes.
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What makes a good design challenge? Fun
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Remember: We are looking for many design challenges in a story and then we can pick the one that best suits our requirements! |