Engineering Lens

This exciting program for grades PreK-5 introduces teachers and students to engineering and thinking skills (tools for engineering) in an interdisciplinary project based learning environment. The program uses the engineering design process, as defined in the Massachusetts Science Framework, as a connector between students’ literature and their mathematics and science curricula. It infuses the development of thinking strategies with creative and critical thinking, provocative questions and meta-cognitive reflection, skills that are part of the engineering process. This approach is based on the definition, “Engineering is about designing useful products & processes for society using all disciplines, but mainly science & mathematics”. They take ownership, create rules and do creativity processes to do the tasks at hand by building a learning environment for themselves. The students take ownership of the learning activities because they are involved in finding the design challenges and doing a design project while the teacher’s role is to reflect, ask guided questions and bring to the surface the concepts and processes the student is discovering. The concept is similar to the play concept children use when creating play games with their peers.