Essential Element Examples Of Elementary Engineering In Elementary Education

Developing an engineering curriculum at any level has similar requirements but different challenges. Douglas L. Jamerson, Jr. Elementary School in Pinellas County, Florida is a new school that has a Magnet Schools Assistance Program grant (MSAP) to design, create, and implement a curriculum that matches Jamerson’s mission to be an engineering attractor school. For Jamerson, this attractor is not simply providing an overview of engineering or a quick trip through engineering careers and/or disciplines with occasional stops on the way to work on a project that have some element of engineering associated with it. For example, being a member of a team that can drop an egg the furthest distance without breaking the egg. Although these types of activities are valuable, they are not the essence of an engineering curriculum, nor are such activities necessary to have a good engineering curriculum. This presentation highlights how Jamerson is integrating essential but elementary engineering and engineering science elements across its required State driven curriculum responsibilities. The energy concept and the corresponding conservation laws are presented with specific grade level examples to illustrate intra and inter grade level integration. The presentation will also illustrate how the science driven mandatory State testing on force and motion is used as scaffolding. Upon first glance at this presentation, it might be tempting to conclude that there is very little content in the paper, primarily a flow of ideas about relating children's literature to engineering concepts and/or that the ideas presented are well-known. However, the challenge addressed is not how to teach state-of-the-art engineering to elementary school children. Nor is it to provided occasional or periodic instruction on engineering marvels and/or engineering career possibilities. Rather, the presentation outlines a method to integrate an entire public school state mandated elementary curriculum at all grade levels using engineering science principles and engineering design practices appropriate for each grade level and spirally connecting these principles and practices upward through all grade levels in the school. Introduction Douglas L. Jamerson, Jr. Elementary School opened two and a half years ago with a daunting challenge. Create a learning institution in a predominantly ethnically isolated inner city area that would naturally integrate the ethnicity of the student population within the school without the aid of a district assigned plan for student placement. To facilitate this challenge, the Pinellas School District provided three key resources. First, a brand new state of the art school complex was provided to create the school around a mathematics and engineering theme. Second, Jamerson was permitted to apply for and subsequently received a 1.5 million dollar Magnet School Assistance Program grant (MSAP). Third, Jamerson was given a wide range of latitude in hiring the staff as well as deviate from district hiring policies and conduct a national search for its teaching staff. One of the requirements of all teachers at Jamerson is that they attain the high standards encompassed in the National Board Certification process and attain this certification within determined period of time. The combination of these three elements has resulted in a dynamic learning community. Students are mastering standards in all subject areas above their current grade and at the same time utilize engineering concepts and principles to foster their thinking and extend the P ge 11595.2 application of key grade level science and mathematics concepts. Proactive partnerships with the University of South Florida’s College of Engineering, IBM Corporation, and a local engineering consultant firm as well as a vibrant parent organization have rounded out our environment. An environment that is on the verge of transforming the way we think about student engagement, expectations for learning, and the currently debated achievement gap between groups of students. Curriculum Challenge The requirements for an engineering curriculum within an elementary school environment are not dictated by the engineering demands but by the public demands that the curriculum meet all the educational expectations and requirements of the school. The role of an elementary education is not to produce “miniature” engineers. The role of that education is to produce students that can read, write and do arithmetic at the highest possible skill levels. In addition, these students must begin to develop deductive and inductive reasoning skills. They must learn to analyze, synthesize and evaluate data. Students must also learn social interactions to ultimately prepare themselves to become productive citizens. The challenge for Jamerson’s elementary engineering focused curriculum is to use engineering and engineering science elements to facilitate accomplishing the school’s primary mission as structured by the benchmarks in Florida’s Sunshine State Standards. Using the Sunshine State Standards as a foundational platform, Jamerson is building an integrated curriculum using engineering as the primary tool to connect the different required subjects taught in every elementary school. Since all engineering is multidiscipline in nature, it provides a wonderful vehicle to integrated different subjects. Although Jamerson’s engineering focused curriculum uses science, mathematics, economics, social science, history, language, and communication to get a project completed, it has an additional value to the school. Working within the engineering design process not only allows teachers to focus on the subject matter knowledge and skills but also on the development of a platform to foster the higher lever skills of synthesizing, analyzing, and comparing data. In this regard, using an engineering platform challenges teachers to do what they do best. This includes developing meaningful lessons and activities that challenge the students to learn and understand the principles and concepts under study. The current climate in many K-12 school districts across the country finds teachers constrained by imposed pacing guides, driven by standardized tests, governed by a series of ongoing assessment/progress reporting requirements, and saddled with a variety of mandatory supplementary learning programs. This situation leaves teachers little time to focus on delivering enriching lessons and related innovating activities simply because there just is not enough time in a typical school day to do it all. An engineering platform permits subject integration which, in turn, frees up classroom time, provides meaningful context to the particular knowledge and skills being focused on, and sustains a very nurturing environment for developing higher level thinking skills. One important bonus for the teacher in this environment is their own professional growth and development. Learning to think like an engineer thinks, questioning how, and, more importantly, why things are made the way they are, understanding that all science and technology is driven by a desire to meet human needs and desires, can expand their own understanding of and comfort with how the world “works”. This deeper understanding of engineering as an integrating theme can provide a very enriching context for all classroom learning without the “hardcore” mathematics always associated with the foundation of all engineering. P ge 11595.3 Vertical Curriculum Integration with Engineering At Douglas L. Jamerson, Jr. Elementary School, scaffolding for the engineering based vertically integrated curriculum is built with the school’s science directives, i.e., following the State and District science topic requirements and Florida’s Sunshine State Standards. Periodic Florida Department of Education screening and influence on various publisher submissions for adoption within Florida dictates the characteristics of the state mandated assessment tool. Periodic district wide science text adoptions from this list strongly influence local school presentation of those topics. Jamerson’s buffer to these external pressures is to catalog its science curriculum within 4 overarching topic areas: the nature of science; physical science; earth sciences; and life sciences. These four areas are subdivided into to seven presentation units that facilitate the development and execution of the engineering themes. Gravitational force and the resultant motion represent one of the presentation units within the physical science topic area and it will be used as the example vertical integration and scaffolding element. Vertical integration is fostered by using similar vocabulary introduced at an appropriate grade level and building. Because many engineering activities and design projects involve manipulation of energy and the conservation laws, these two concepts are introduced early and continually developed during the six years students are at Jamerson. Additionally, energy manipulation and the application of conservation laws provide vehicles to quantify the science taught in elementary school. Providing opportunities to measure and record data and results of activities then provides the raw materials to support meaningful higher level learning skills including analyzing, synthesizing and predicting as a culminating activity for the same lesson. It also provides the opening for discussions about how mankind has used the science topic to make our lives easier historically and in the present. All lessons and activities at Jamerson are built around the design process of Plan, Design, Check, and Share. This process provides an integrating theme as well as providing a vehicle for developing good problem solving skills and high level thinking throughout the school day. Implementation of the Jamerson Design Process also builds with increasing grade level. All teachers are encouraged to use the process by setting lea