Every Thursday on the EiE Blog, we bring you useful tips for teaching classroom engineering.

The Engineering is Elementary curriculum unit "No Bones About It" gives students a chance to apply their science knowledge to a real-world engineering challenge: designing a knee brace to support an injured knee. To do the challenge, students need a model leg with a knee that really bends!

You make this model in advance using cardboard mailing tubes and a wiffle ball. Your teacher guide has detailed directions for how to do it, but if you're not the "crafty" type, you might want a little extra help. That's why we also have a short "How-to" video that breaks the task into easy-to-understand steps.

Do you teach the EiE unit "Sounds Like Fun: Seeing Animal Sounds"? Our professional development collaborators at the Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM) have a big list of handy tips for teaching the acoustical engineering activities in this unit. Here are two of our favorites.

Each Thursday on the EiE Blog we offer helpful teaching tips or answer your questions about classroom and materials management.

Are you planning to teach the Engineering is Elementary unit “Now You’re Cooking: Designing Solar Ovens”?  Here are two handy tips from EiE professional development provider Jason Brewer for Lesson 3 (“What’s Hot and What’s Not”).

http://www.eie.org/eie-classroom-videoDo you teach the Engineering is Elementary (EiE) unit "Solid as a Rock: Replicating an Artifact" or “A Slick Solution: Cleaning an Oil Spill?" You’ll want to check out the brand-new Classroom Videos for these units.

If you haven’t taught an EiE unit in a while, Classroom Videos are great for a concise refresher. They help you see what each activity looks like when real kids are working through it. Use the helpful reflection questions that accompany each video to identify highly effective pedagogical practices you can put to work in your own classroom.

If you’ve spent any time with young children you know they love to ask, “Why?” When a patient adult answers with a thoughtful explanation, that’s a wonderful learning experience!

But depending on the circumstances, there's also great value in deflecting the question back to the child. I got a dramatic reminder of this principle at our Engineering is Elementary (EiE) staff retreat last year.