Engineering and Technology

      I feel that it is very important to incorporate technology and engineering into all different science units; even those presented at the elementary school level. By providing children with a strong foundation or understanding at a young age, I feel that they will be much  more comfortable with the process and will be able to conduct the design process effectively as they get older and into more challenging concepts.

      In terms of the younger grades and developing a foundation, I feel that it is very important to teach students bout the different materials that they can use to construct and build models or prototypes. It is important to have students explore these materials or tools to learn how to operate them properly. For our lesson this past week, Mia and I decided to focus on the MA Frameworks standard Technology and Engineering 1.3 for Grades PreK-2.  This standard requires students to identify and describe the safe and proper use of tools and materials (e.g. glue, scissors, tape, ruler, paper, toothpicks, straws, spools) to construct simple structures. Therefore, we decided to have our students create a miniature model of the butterfly life cycle about of pasta requiring them to use glue. We also had the students arrange six stages of the butterfly life cycle in order which required them to cut the six paper squares/illustrations out, place them in order and pasted them to a folder. All of the students did an excellent job holding the scissors correctly (safely), pasting properly and gluing efficiently. The students seem to have a strong understanding of scissors, glue, glue sticks and paper and are all able to handle and properly use the materials; thus I feel that they will be able to proceed to the more intensive engineering design process that we learned about in class. 

      The Engineering Design Process that we discussed in class last week is an eight step design that involves, identifying a need or problem, researching the need or problem, developing possible solutions, selecting the best possible solution, constructing a prototype, testing and evaluating the solution, communicating the solution and redesigning the solution and prototype as necessary. 

     I am rather sad that this Monday is our last lesson with the students =(. It will also be interesting to see what questions the students have for us because we took the butterflies out of their classroom after they left on Monday.