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| See you at the NSTA STEM Forum! |
Elementary STEM Showcase
Thursday, July 28, 10:30 AM–12:00 (Drop in any time!)
Four Seasons Ballroom, Colorado Convention Center
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| Get your hands on a parachute at the STEM Showcase. |
This popular flea-market-style event gives you a chance to interact with representatives of more than 30 organizations as you explore resources and strategies for elementary STEM education that have been featured in NSTA’s Science and Children magazine. We’ll be showing what NGSS science and engineering practices look like in the elementary classroom as we demonstrate activities from our curriculum unit A Long Way Down: Designing Parachutes. Please drop in to ask questions and share your own classroom engineering experiences. There will be door prizes!
Engineering Challenge: Designing Gliders
Thursday, July 28, 1:30 PM
Room 605, Colorado Convention Center
This hands-on workshop is for middle school STEM teachers. You’ll get a chance to try an engineering activity you can take back to your classroom! Use an iterative engineering process to modify a simple glider with the goal of improving its performance, as measured by how far it flies.
Effective Questioning Strategies in Engineering Activities
Thursday, July 28, 3:00 PM
Room 107, Colorado Convention Center
As an elementary teacher you ask hundreds of questions in a day . . . but not all questions are created equal! In this interactive workshop, you’ll develop effective questioning strategies for the engineering classroom, with a focus on situations where students design a technology that doesn’t quite work as expected. What kinds of questions can you use to prompt your students to exercise their critical thinking skills and persevere? To spark your questions during the session, you’ll work with authentic examples of student-designed model windmills from our Catching the Wind unit and view short video scenes from elementary classrooms.
Engineering Design Challenges that Inspire Inquiry
Friday, July 29, 1:30 PM
Room 2013, Colorado Convention Center
When your students work on an engineering design challenge, they draw on their science knowledge. In this hands-on workshop, you’ll explore how to promote authentic inquiry as you integrate engineering with your elementary science lessons. You’ll designing a model “magnetic levitation” transportation system from the EiE unit The Attraction is Obvious as you reflect on the science topics students would need to know to complete the challenge successfully and brainstorm science lessons to scaffold the engineering challenge.
Using Our Heads to Protect Our Brains: Contextualized Middle-School Engineering
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| Try an activity from the curriculum unit Put a Lid on It. |
Friday, July 29, 3:00 PM
Room 110, Colorado Convention Center
Middle school is when students may cement a lifelong passion for STEM subjects . . . or lose interest entirely. Learn how engineering activities can build confidence, enthusiasm, and engagement in middle-school learners—and see what it’s like to teach a unit from EiE’s out-of-school-time curriculum Engineering Everywhere as you design a helmet to protect the brain.
We looking forward to seeing you at these sessions in just a few days. And after you’re done dropping parachutes, remember to drop by EiE booth #527 in the exhibit hall!
Engineering is Elementary is a project of the National Center for Technological Literacy® at the Museum of Science, Boston.
