In our out-of-school-time curricula, Engineering Adventures and Engineering Everywhere, we strive to emphasize real-world connections that make engineering feel relevant to youth. You can always find articles, videos, and books on each unit’s resource page (find EA resources here and EE resources here!), but our staff is constantly finding new viral videos and articles that relate to our units. Here are four timely connections that will show your kids that engineering is all around them, and is constantly changing the world.

The EiE classroom video collection offers a window into classrooms engaging in elementary engineering across the country. In these videos, you’ll see expert teaching techniques in action and hard-working student engineers, as well as short interviews with educators about their experience teaching EiE. Our hardworking video team is committed to filming every lesson of each unit in two different classrooms, so educators and researchers can gain a better understanding of what engineering really looks like in a wide variety of elementary classrooms. With the three latest additions to the classroom video collection, we are very close to reaching our goal of two sets of videos per unit! Read on to learn more about the newest videos, featuring Solid as a Rock: Replicating an Artifact, No Bones About It: Designing Knee Braces, and A Slick Solution: Cleaning an Oil Spill.

The Engineering is Elementary team is dedicated to making our engineering curricula accessible to all students, including English Learners—the fastest growing group of public school students in the United States. And because 77% of English Learners speak Spanish at home, we are fully committed to supporting educators in their instruction of Spanish-speaking students. Today, the EiE team is happy to announce two exciting project updates that support our mission to bring engineering education to all learners.

Did you know our curriculum team designed the EiE engineering curriculum to support literacy instruction? We created literacy resources, like our context-setting storybooks, to enhance our units and emphasize the importance of written communication. In honor of National Literacy Month, we wanted to share a few examples of how our curriculum supports literacy instruction and offer fun extension lessons that can help you incorporate creative writing into every EiE unit!

To date, 42 states and the District of Columbia have adopted Common Core State Standards for Math. What does that mean in the classroom? Students still have to learn to add, subtract, measure, and make bar graphs. They're also expected to develop a deep understanding of math concepts and be able to apply math outside the classroom.

Hands-on engineering is ideal for putting math in a real-world context, and Engineering is Elementary's Linking the E & M in STEM (LEMSTEM) professional development workshop is packed with creative strategies for bringing meaningful math and engineering integration to the elementary classroom.