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Flow of the Story

This exciting program for grades PreK-5 introduces teachers and students to engineering and thinking skills (tools for engineering) in an interdisciplinary project based learning environment. The program uses the engineering design process, as defined in the Massachusetts Science Framework, as a connector between students’ literature and their mathematics and science curricula. It infuses the development of thinking strategies with creative and critical thinking, provocative questions and meta-cognitive reflection, skills that are part of the engineering process. This approach is based on the definition, “Engineering is about designing useful products & processes for society using all disciplines, but mainly science & mathematics”.

As an example, using the Fairy Tale;  Goldilocks, this gives us the platform to create situations where thinking skills ( tools of engineering) can be modeled and learned.

Note: each of the links below open in a separate window in your browser. 

1. Design with the students "How are we going to measure success and provide feedback during this activity".

2. Find a design challenge in the story by using a story map.

3. Use of a mind map and the probing questions to develop the design challenges.

4. Create the Design challenges with a thought to the math and science elements.

5. Group selection of the design challenge to work with.

6. Create the project groups where the students can collaborate, design and present their results.

7. Start the design process.  Students use creative and critical thinking to research, development and test their solutions.