Engineering

If you are like me, you have a giant collection of “stuff” saved just in case it will be useful someday for one project or another. Hot summer days are the perfect time to pull out this stuff and let kids go wild. How can you be sure they will do something productive with those old cell phones, paper towel tubes, and lovely containers of various shapes and sizes, though?

Welcome to week 3 of our Summer Slide Buster series here on the Gateway! We have been having fun choosing and testing activities, and we hope you found some of our suggestions interesting and useful. Whether you are a teacher, a parent, or both, you can find activities on the Gateway to inspire all the kids in your life to keep their minds active during the break.

As each school year comes to an end, teachers around the world look back and wonder, “What did my students really learn this year? Did I cover all the topics I needed to cover? How much do my students understand?” If we are doing our job right, students should come away from the year knowing a lot more than when they started, and they should be excited for their next year of learning. In the moment, the students and teachers are probably slightly more excited for summer break, but hopefully the excitement for learning will come.

There’s a drought sighting on the horizon of STEM education and careers, and it’s got many people worried. The number of U.S. college students obtaining engineering degrees is dwindling at alarming rates, with one science writer citing that in 2006, only 4.5% of American college degrees were in engineering, compared to 33.3% in China.

Earthquakes are mysterious things. We understand why earthquakes happen, but still lack the ability to predict the magnitude of a quake or when such an event might occur. Once an earthquake begins, current technology can only provide a few seconds’ warning before severe shaking arrives at a specific location. For most people, the first sign of an impending earthquake occurs only once it’s begun.

According to "Curious George" Margolin, “an ‘inventor’ is almost any child under the age of about 9. He…lives partly in the ‘real’ world and ‘much’ in a world of possibilities and make-believe.” This is great news if you are teaching kids 9 and under, but how do we keep this curiosity alive in our older students? The following sites and resources can help maintain this intrinsic sense of curiosity that blossoms during the younger years. Please browse through these resources and search for more that will suit your needs on The Gateway. Good luck, and may you and your students be inspired and innovative this year!

When I was in second grade, our teacher assigned us a project on inventors. It was to be our first research project, where we had to use the school and public libraries to collect information about our chosen inventors.

“I already have my book,” I told Mrs. Flanagan on the day the project was assigned.

Mrs. Flanagan was duly impressed by my efficiency, until she found out that my book was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and that my chosen inventor was Willy Wonka.

“He’s not a real person, dear,” she said. “Your report has to be on an actual inventor.”

With 3 kids of various ages, it’s pretty difficult to find a TV show that’s both age-appropriate and entertaining for them all. Terrific, then, that one day we happened to stumble upon Design Squad, a Peabody Award-winning reality competition series on PBS where teen contestants tackle engineering challenges for an actual client. My kids were all immediately engrossed in the show: the squabbling stopped, quiet ensued, and I avoided a date with some Extra-Strength Tylenol. Bliss! Design Squad’s mission is to attract kids to engineering and inventing, and to this end has created a host of science activities, teacher’s guides, and other resources to help students flex their design process skills while learning science and engineering concepts.