Training Guide for Middle School

Training Guide for Middle School

Engineering Design in Oregon Science Classrooms

Day 2

Interactive teacher workshop on using the Engineering Design Process to improve teachers’ effectiveness at teaching science

Copyright 2013, Oregon University System, All Rights Reserved
Table of Contents – Day 2

Objective: Help make a “trainer” successful in leading an interactive teacher workshop on using the Engineering Design Process to improve teachers’ effectiveness at teaching science.

Day 2, Welcome (8:00-8:10)………………………………………………………………….4

Day 2, Unit 1 (8:10-9:45) ………………………………………………………………..……4

How the Engineering Design Process applies to teaching and learning science in middle school

Engineering design in the Oregon standard
Engineering Design Process for Middle School
What the students should learn about the process
How the process can be used to enhance the learning of science as a sister to the scientific inquiry process

Day 2, Unit 2 (10:00-11:45) ……………………………………………………………...... 10

Example hands-on exercise featuring the Engineering Design Process for learning Earth and Space Science (Bioswales)

Introduction including connections to Oregon standard
Hands-on activity in groups
Small Group Discussion

Lunch (11:45-12:30)

Day 2, Unit 3 (12:30-1:45) ……………………………………………………………..……16

Example hands-on exercise featuring the Engineering Design Process for learning Physical science (Ultimate Speed Challenge)

Introduction including connections to Oregon standard
Hands-on activity in groups
Small Group Discussion

Day 2, Unit 4 (1:45-2:00) …………………………………………….………………….…..20

Troubleshooting as an opportunity for learning science

Day 2, Unit 5 (2:15-3:15) …………………………………………….………………….…..20

Formative Assessment of Engineering Design process

Day 2, Unit 6(3:15-4:15) …………………………………………….………………….…..20

Integration of engineering design into lesson plans

Day 2, Wrap Up (4:15-4:30) …………………………………………………………..…….21

Workshop Script

Day 2, Welcome (8:00-8:10)

Introductions – Facilitators/Participants
Workshop Goals (on slide and poster)
Logistics – description of baskets
Workshop and Folder Overview
Group Norms
Day 2 Agenda review (slide)
Explain colored dots or numbers on name tags if using them to assign people to break-out groups

Day 2, Unit 1 (8:10-9:45)

Facilitator Timeline

8:10-9:45 – How the Engineering Design Process applies to teaching and learning science in middle school (Activity)

8:10-8:40 – Commingling Core and Content

8:40-9:00 – Engineering Design Process for Middle School

9:00-9:45 – What the students should learn about the process

8:00-8:10 Participant Agenda and Overview

Give the participants a general outline for the day so they know what to expect. If you are facilitating a 1-day workshop, review the training materials in common (Day 1 workshop) and modify today’s agenda as needed. Be sure to:

State the purpose of the workshop and explain how participants will work together
Ask participants if they are familiar with engineering design and have used it in their classrooms

Agenda

8:00-8:10Overview and Welcome

8:10-9:45How the engineering-design process applies to teaching and learning science in middle school

9:45-10:00Break

10:00-11:45Bioswales: Hands-on Lesson featuring the Engineering Design Process for learning Earth and Space Science

11:45-12:30Lunch

12:30-1:45Ultimate Speed Challenge: Hands-on Lesson featuring the Engineering Design Process for learning Physical Science

1:45-2:00Troubleshooting as an opportunity for learning science

2:00-2:15Break

2:15-3:15Formative Assessment of Engineering Design process

3:15-4:15Teachers Incorporate the Engineering Design Process into their Lesson Plans

4:15-4:30Closing Activities

8:10 – 9:00 Engineering Design in the Oregon Standards

Engineering Design Standard – The Engineering Design Process, in the Oregon Standard, is different at each grade level of the middle school band. It is essential that these standards be addressed in contexts that promote scientific inquiry, use of evidence, critical thinking, making connections, and communication.

Preparing for the lesson

On strips of paper, write the following: 6th Grade, 7th Grade, and 8th Grade.
Place the sheets in a bowl.
Arrange participants into 3 groups. If you are running a large workshop, have five or six groups of 3 teams and five or six bowls of paper strips.
Make sure that the Engineering Design pages of the Oregon Science Standardsare available at each table.
Make sure that each group of participants has a chart pack (flip chart), ideally on an easel, and one or more markers.

Presenting the Lesson (8:10, 20 minutes)

Have each group choose a strip of paper out of the bowl (5 minutes).
As a group, participants will draw a representation of the Engineering Design Standard that go along with the grade level they selected (15 minutes). The drawing can include words, callouts, illustrations and pictures. It can even be on several sheets of paper if needed. The drawing may be very rudimentary but that’s ok. The point is for this diagram to help another person understand the standard for that particular grade level. For example, if a group selected 7th Grade, they will draw their interpretation of the core standard “Engineering design is a process of identifying needs, defining problems, identifying constraints, developing solutions, and evaluating proposed solutions.” And also the content standards:

Define a problem that addresses a need and identify constraints that may be related to possible solutions.
Design, construct, and test a possible solution using appropriate tools and materials. Evaluate proposed solutions to identify how design constraints are addressed.
Explain how new scientific knowledge can be used to develop new technologies and how new technologies can be used to generate new scientific knowledge.

Facilitator Instructions (8:30, 30 minutes)

When each group has finished creating their picture or series of pictures, have them complete a Core and Content Standards Tour/Carousel.

Engineering Design Core and Content Standards Tour

Each small group will rotate to 5 stations of other participant sketches (5 minutes each).
At each station, participants will review the Core and Content Standards for each grade level.
Rotating groups will provide feedback with sticky notes.
Groups review feedback (5 minutes).

What the students should learn about the process (9:00)

Show the slide, “The Engineering Design Process for Middle School” to have a quick reference on the Engineering Design Process.For more detailed descriptions of the process, download and review the Middle School Primer (

The most basic level of the Engineering Design Process, a level that all middle school students should be comfortable doing, is to identify and define a problem or need. They should be able to propose potential solutions and design a prototype.

Assessing students’ understanding of the Engineering Design Process is important to understanding how to best create learning environments that successfully use engineering design in the classroom.

Index Card Chair Engineering (9:05, 5 min)

Objective

Build an index card chair that can support the weight of an apple, orange or unopened can of soda.

Background

The action of solving problems also opens up the creative process for students, thus enhancing the engagement of students in the classroom learning. Reports indicate that when students are building and creating things in the classroom, the engagement level is consistently intense. It does not allow a student to simply sit back and wait to be told what to do, but instead requires that the student create, test, and evaluate for themselves. This in turn leads to genuine decision making, which should be an integral part of the entire curriculum. The goal of problem solving is to educate students to be able to use engineering and/or scientific processes no matter what the problem is that they encounter.

Preparing to Present the Lesson

1. Hand out the materials. Each group will need:

3”x5” index cards (6)
Scissors
Large apple, orange or unopened can of soda
Index Card Chair Challenge sheets (found in the Workshop Handouts file)

2. Identify a work area that can accommodate the construction and testing of the chairs.

Presenting the Lesson (9:05, 20 minutes)

Explain the lesson. Tell participants that they’ll be working in pairs to design a chair that can support the weight of an apple or orange out of index cards. You can also use an unopened can of soda if that is more convenient.
Hand out the Index Card Chair Challenge Sheet.
Have participants brainstorm two chair designs.
Keep the participants on time. Give a few minutes of warning when the activity is about to end.
After the participants have built their chair, line the chairs up side by side on a table and see which chairs can hold an apple or orange.

Sharing and Cleanup (9:25, 20 minutes)

1. After the activity, have participants reflect on designing their chair and share what they feel students should learn about the Engineering Design Process. Be sure each group has their EDP handout on their tables or that you still have the slide available on the overhead projector. Encourage the participants to think about each step of the process and create their list. Be sure that each group has a flip chart available to record their answers to the following questions. Let the participants know the time at the half-way mark and then again a few minutes before the time is up.

What should students know about:

Defining a problem that addresses a need?
Identifying criteria, constraints and priorities?
Describing relevant scientific principles and knowledge?
Investigating possible solutions?
Designing and constructing a proposed solution?
Testing a proposed solution and collecting relevant data?
Evaluating the proposed solution in terms of design and performance criteria, constraints, priorities and trade-offs?
Identifying possible design improvements?
The EDP in general?

Additional questions if groups finish early:

When you were given the challenge, what did you do or think?
What different designs did you see and which ones were the most effective? Why?
How many designs did you try to build before you got one that could support the can of food?
Did you brainstorm different solutions? Did that help you make a decision as to what would be the best chair to build?
Would it have helped to have other tools to build your chair?
What would happen if the chair failed?

Let the participants know that this is a warm up exercise and not intended to be used by their students. Three engineering design lessons/activities are provided for classroom use. Two of the lessons will be covered later today and one is available online.

Dismiss for break at 9:45.

Day 2, Unit 2 (10:00-12:00)

Example hands-on exercise featuring the Engineering Design Process for learning Earth and Space Science

The hands-on activities in this workshop are only partial lessons and participants do not have enough time to develop a deep understanding of the engineering design concepts introduced. However, participants will learn the Engineering Design Process and how it relates to scientific inquiry during the hands-on portion of the workshop.

Facilitator Timeline

10:00-11:45 – Bioswales Design Activity

10:00-10:40 – Presenting and Completing the Lesson

10:40-11:00 – Sharing and Cleanup

11:00-11:25 – Scientific Inquiry vs. the Engineering Design Process

11:25-11:45 – Small Group Discussion

Bioswales Design

The Bioswales Lesson Plan includes an optional exploration step where students experiment with different filter materials such as cheesecloth, sand, soil, gravel, limestone, and paper to better understand their properties and abilities. They can use what they learn to inform the subsequent design step to determine the combination and sequence of materials that best clean polluted water. The Lesson plan provides two other options: (1) A data analysis activity based on provided data and (2) Skipping the exploration step and move directly to the design step.

To save time, workshop participants will follow the second option above and use a pre-completed classroom data table that provides experimental results for several filter materials. Participants will use this data on the Bioswales Data Table, Completed and the Engineering Design Process to design their filters.

Key Concepts

By reading the data tables, participants will find that many factors influence the filter’s ability to filter the water and prepare to jump into the Engineering Design Process and enhance the learning of science.

Workshop Materials - Prepare to have participants work in groups of four. For a workshop of 40 participants, you will need 10 sets of materials – see the Lesson Plan. Adjust these quantities according to the expected size of your workshop.

Preparing to Present the Lesson

Read through the entire lesson and be ready to discuss the data collection portion and how it was done.
Make copies of the following for each group of teachers.

Bioswales Lesson Plan
Bioswales Vocab Alert!
Bioswales Article
Bioswales ExplorationActivity
Bioswales Class Data Table, Filter Materials
Bioswales Data Analysis Activity
Bioswales Data Table, Completed
Bioswales DesignActivity

Prepare a test containers for each group of teachers as described in the Lesson Plan.
Prepare the dirty water solution by adding tea and lemon juice as described in the Lesson Plan.
Prepare the other materials as described in the Lesson Plan.
Show participants the materials that will be tested
Distribute materials to groups.

Presenting the Lesson (10:00, 40 minutes)

Point out the following materials in the participants’ packets or pass them out:
Bioswales Article (one per person)
Bioswales Data Table, Completed sheet (at least one per group)
Bioswales Design Activityhandout(at least one per group)
Give them a few minutes to read theBioswales Article.
Summarize the options provided for an Exploration Step in the Lesson Plan, mentioning the data collection methods and data analysis procedures that can be used in the classroom. Explain that because the focus of the workshop is engineering design the exploration step is being skipped in the workshop to focus the available time on the design step.
Have participants fill out the criteria, priorities and constraintson the Bioswales Design Activityhandout. You might want to set the criteria as a whole—or the teacher groups can decide for themselves what their filter goals should be. Either way, try to be as specific as possible. For example: instead of saying the filter should clean the water, say the filter should lower the turbidity to 50 ml or more.[1] Other criteria to consider include how long it should take the water filter to work. Reviewing the data table should help the teachers develop their criteria.
Teachers, working in groups, will use the data table to brainstorm two different filter designs. They should sketch their ideas in the space provided on the Bioswales Design worksheet.
Have them begin building and testing according to the instructions on their Bioswales Design handout.
Go over the questions on the Filter Material Research handout at the end of the activity.

Sharing and Cleanup (10:40, 20 minutes)

1. After the activity, have participants share what they have learned. Ask about things the participants will have noticed or had difficulty with such as:

What science concepts are involved?
What factors made your filter work better or worse?
What different designs did you see and which ones seemed the most effective? Why?
What happened when more filter material or layers were added?
Did the order of the filters seem to make a difference?
What was the most difficult part of this activity?
What could be done to improve it?

2. Encourage the participants to develop generalizations for which designs worked the best and why.

3. Summarize the main ideas and reinforce the science concepts learned while applying the Engineering Design Process.

4. To cleanup, have participants take apart their filters, wash off the sediments you can reuse such as the sand, gravel and limestone and leave them to dry. Throw away any soil, used paper or cheesecloth and put-back any reusable materials. The rest should be thrown away or recycled if possible.

Facilitator Tips and Tricks

Encourage participants to experiment with different designs.
Offer encouragement. People may be inclined to give up or think they are not good at engineering if their design does not work the first time. Tell participants that there are no wrong answers. Give examples such as Thomas Edison and his team tried many designs for a light bulb before theyfound a workable solution. Engineers typical continue to redesign their work to improve it and make it better (this is the last step of the EDP).
Discuss both positive and negative modifications with the designer participant.

Scientific Inquiry vs. the Engineering Design Process (11:00, 25 minutes)

Using the Bioswales activity as an example, allow participants to reflect upon and discuss both the scientific inquiry process and the Engineering Design Process and connect them to teaching and learning science.

Although teachers will be eager to talk about their experiences, it’s also important for the facilitator to keep the discussion on track and ensure that each participant fully understands the differences between the two processes. Facilitators will have to judge if the conversation is going in the right direction and make adjustments to the direction if necessary.

This portion of the workshop is important as participants will use this to gain a deeper understanding of their experiences, how the Engineering Design Process applies to the lesson, and how they can use it to enhance their teaching. Using the flip-chart at each station, have the group at each table work together to answer one or more of the following questions. This portion of the workshop is designed to take 20 minutes. Give each group about 3 minutes per question if they are answering six questions, 6 minutes per question if they are answering three, etc. Keep the tables on schedule by letting them know the time remaining. Here are some questions that you can use:

What are some of the characteristics of the Engineering Design process?
How does the Engineering Design Process differ from Science Inquiry?
What are some of the benefits to using the Engineering Design when it comes to student learning?
What other activities have you done in class that you can modify to use the Engineering Design process?
What challenges do you anticipate and how might you addresses these challenges?

Note:If you’re not sure that all participants will be able to see the screen that shows the above questions while they’re meeting as groups, create a handout with these questions and distribute it to the groups.