Novel engineering
is a way for elementary students to use literature as a basis for design
challenges. It helps students to identify problems in their text, design
solutions to overcome these problems, and engage in projects to test their
solutions.
Mrs. Sayre, our
LRC Director, helped our second graders with this project. We began by reading Clementine by Sara Pennypacker. This novel is about the character Clementine, who is having a ‘not so
good week.’ In fact, she is having a DISASTROUS week! She encounters many
problems in school and at home, and her solutions are not entirely appropriate
and often get her in trouble. To help Clelmentine with her problems, our students followed
the Novel Engineering steps as follows:
1.
Read a book and identify problems - Through
discussion and attentive reading, students collect problems that characters
face.
2.
Scope problems and brainstorm solutions - Students
consider the needs of the story's character/client and the context/constraints
imposed by the text as they brainstorm possible solutions.
3.
Design a solution - Students work in teams to plan
and build a functional prototype that addresses the character's needs and
constraints.
4.
Get feedback - Students test their solutions
as they build and get feedback from their teacher and/or peers.
5.
Improve designs - Students use information
gathered during testing and presentations to improve and revise their designs.
6.
Share - Teams can either present their final solution or
reflections on their process to the class, write a story that includes their
solution, or make an advertisement for their solution. 1
Once we finished the
novel, we brainstormed other possible solutions for Clementine’s problems with
Mrs. Sayre. We used these solutions to independently design one solution for
one of Clementine’s problems. We then worked as a small group to use parts of
each of our plans to design a suitable group solution to the problem we had
selected. The fun part was building our solution from recyclable materials. We
tested our design, made improvements if necessary, and presented it to the
whole group. By sharing our solutions we were able to demonstrate our ideas and
exchange design ideas with others. Our solutions are seen below.
The benefits of our
Novel Engineering project were total engagement in learning, enhancing
comprehension as the students used evidence from the text, integrating
different disciplines in common core standards, introducing students to
engineering problems, and engaging students in the engineering process through
teamwork and communication. The second graders thoroughly enjoyed this learning
experience that supports STEM in education.
1 http://www.novelengineering.org
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