Last summer EiE’s curriculum team had quite a few projects in the pipeline. Just the same, they added a new goal: Making it easy for educators to understand how the 20 Engineering is Elementary curriculum units address the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

“We didn’t have specific funding to accomplish the project,” says Melissa Higgins, EiE’s director of curriculum development. “But we knew it was a resource teachers needed. With so many states adopting the Common Core, teachers have to make the case that they’re meeting these standards. Meanwhile there’s so much that has to fit into the school day, we want to make it simple for teachers to see all of the learning goals they can address with one EiE activity.”

We’re exploring engineering habits of mind on the EiE Blog, and this week’s topic is the habit of “thinking flexibly and exploring multiple solutions.” Which brings to mind an experience I had at the EiE retreat last fall.

Retreats give us a chance to test new engineering activities that we might include in our curricula. This time, we tried out a biomedical engineering design challenge for Engineering Everywhere, our afterschool curriculum for middle-schoolers.

All this month on the EiE blog, we’re using short videos that capture candid moments in elementary classrooms to look at how kids develop “engineering habits of mind” (ways of thinking that support lifelong learning). Today we look at the habit of “applying science knowledge to solve a problem through engineering."

UPenn psychologist Angela Duckworth launched a media frenzy with her 2013 TED Talk on “grit.” This trait, she asserted, is essential for school success; students who have grit stay motivated in the face of adversity and even outright failure.