The notion of using literary texts to seed engineering challenges really is novel. I’m curious how the approach has played out in the classroom, particularly in the middle grades, where instruction tends to be departmentalized. How have middle grades teachers taken up the approach?

What an engaging integration of content areas! Is the intent that this be used as after-school enrichment, or that it be incorporated into the school day?

It seems that this type of project also lends itself to parent involvement, since it utilizes a wide range of skills and knowledge. Have you involved parents at all?

A unique concept. I am curious to know what challenges you may have encountered with English Language Learners in regards to this project and was there consideration of doing follow up studies on how English Language Learners were impacted by this approach in teaching engineering concepts? I think the project is great and looking forward really learning about it.

We have not worked with a large number of English Language Learnings on this project, but I can comment on the ones that have been involved. As a beginning Novel Engineering activity, we suggest to teachers that they pick a book with many pictures and little text, such as A Snowy Day. Since pictures are such a large part of this, it is easy for them to access it. With longer books, teachers need to employ similar strategies as they would use when reading with ELL students. One of the reading strategies of NE and strong reading instruction is for teacher to read aloud to students and have discussions along the way. This allows for discussion of vocabulary as well as concepts. For the building/engineering portion of the activity, ELL students do not seem to be at a disadvantage to other students. In fact, not only with ELL students, but also with students that do not traditionally do well in classrooms, the building gives them a change to excel and have their ideas come to life outside of the reading and writing that often is more difficult for them.

We have not discussed exploring ELL students specifically in a follow-up study.

Very neat idea. What do you know about making it work? I’ve seen engineering projects become arts and crafts and not really contribute to learning.

Also, are you making a library of successful implementations of Novel Engineering in classrooms? I think a set of videos with other resources attached would be good even if you don’t know guidelines for actually making it work yet. (Yes, I continue to be a case-based reasoner and assume others are also. ;-)) I am thinking about the cases including (1) the book or text the kids are drawing on, (2) what the teacher asked them to do and the support provided, (3) the teacher’s intention, i.e., what he/she wanted the kids to learn and/or experience, and (4) a representative set of student projects, and attached to each one, the teacher’s (or somebody’s else’s) annotation about what that student or group of students took away from the activity.

Meredith, meet those working on the Through my Window project; it is also focusing on engineering and literacy together with each other. Project number 475 in the videohall: resourcecenters2015.videohall.com/posters/475.

I am also putting a note on their site.

Janet

Janet,

Responding to your comment about engineering vs. arts and crafts, we’ve seen the most success when teachers are clear with students about the expectations of the functionality of the project, such as, “whatever you make must work with the materials you have available to you and time you have in this classroom” or by asking students how they will know it will work and then pushing back when they are not able to describe how it will function.

Also in the first project, students come to understand that they are working toward a functional device so by the second activity, most students are working on functional designs.

Janet,
Glad the rumor is true and you are moving back to Boston. I’d love to meet and talk more about this. For us, the case studies serve a few purposes such as research and dissemination. We are playing around with different formats for each purpose and audience, but video is an important part of both. Looking forward to talking!

This is my third year doing Novel Engineering in my classroom (4th and 5th graders). The student engagement you garner from the engineering (building) part makes Novel Engineering immediately useful as a tool for literacy. It adds a powerful layer of authenticity to student discussions about the story. It’s no longer just fun to discuss a story; students feel invested both in their own plans to solve the character’s problem as well as their classmate’s plans. This is because they care about the character and that character has now become their client.
I totally agree with Elissa’s statement (above) that explicit expectations about the functionality of the product are important if you want students to create functional prototypes. In my experiences it’s very important that students understand the prototype should function. At the elementary level they like to rely on “magic” literally when they encounter a snag in their plans. This is understandable considering all the magic they read about in fairy tales etc. I have a “no magic” clause in all of my Novel Engineering units. :) This approach greatly enhances the feedback discussions about whether or not the product actually can solve the problem. Therefore, significant amounts of iteration results for each group. Which in turn creates more rounds of rich literacy discussion. It takes practice to do Novel Engineering well (and I’m not there yet), but the journey has created plenty of worthwhile literacy moments in my classrooms.

Jeff, thank you for sharing this vivid image from your classroom. I’m really curious about how your use of the strategy has evolved over the three years. What’s changed? Are there aspects that have become more or less automatic for you? Have new conundrums of use emerged? What advice would you give to a new user? Thanks again.