How to Teach Engineering and Design Thinking in Grades 3–8

Students in later elementary and middle school grades are natural scientists. As educators, our role is to tap into the students’ desire to discover more about the world around them. At these ages, children are often questioning how and why things are done. Your class may also be curious about new technology and in love with gadgets that improve their daily lives.

Teaching engineering and design thinking to students in grades three through eight is an opportunity to watch those developing brains thrive. In fact, you might find yourself admiring how well your class pulls together to create unique products that solve common problems. Fortunately, you don’t have to be an engineer yourself to teach STEM concepts. Using these strategies helps cultivate design thinking and engineering skills in your students that spark interest in science and technology.

Design Thinking Explained

Design thinking is a creative problem-solving technique that focuses on the user’s needs. The first step of this process is asking what problems a user faces and establishing empathy for their struggles. For instance, you could ask a group of students about how people use backpacks and if there are any ways to make them more comfortable or helpful. 

Once the problem is viewed through an empathetic lens, your students will then be ready to begin researching possible solutions. Imagining new concepts and brainstorming ways to improve a product are also part of the design thinking process. While throwing wild ideas into the collaboration is encouraged, your students will slowly begin narrowing down solutions to develop a plan for designing a solution or product.

Design thinking eventually culminates in the creation of a model or prototype that students can then test out in real-life experiments. After gathering more data, students then use what they know to improve the design until they are satisfied with the completed product.

Focusing On Real World Problems

By the third grade, most students can tell you all about the various problems they see in the world. In fact, you might even find that your students have a few solutions in mind already for streamlining common processes such as standing in the lunch line or managing their work at home.

Teaching engineering and design thinking opens up the opportunity to plan more project-based learning experiences. To start, consider the problems that your students might be facing. For instance, they may struggle with keeping their backpack organized. Or, they may be wondering how they could improve a favorite toy.

Older students may be ready to experiment with designing a simple video game. Or, your middle school classes might want to see if they can create an assistive device for someone with a disability. All of these real-world concepts help students to see the purpose behind their work. Providing opportunities to design products that they can use in real-life situations also helps with the later stages of design thinking, such as testing and revising their ideas.

Encouraging Testing and Improvement

For design thinking to be effective, it is critical to avoid shutting down the creative process. All of the students in your class need to feel comfortable sharing their thoughts, especially during the brainstorming stage. Encourage your students to share ideas, even if they seem outlandish. Keeping an open mind is often what leads to some of the greatest discoveries. Reading books about inventors who have failed in their earlier prototypes can help students appreciate this stage of the creative process.

You can also use biographies of scientists to transition into the testing and improvement phase of designing products. As you see students begin to produce prototypes and models using their plans, you’ll want to help them create tests to see how successful they are. Make sure to remind your students that it is normal to need to revise a design until it reaches perfection. If a test fails, help scaffold their learning by asking what they can do differently. Carving out time in your daily schedule to perform multiple tests and revisions can help your students find greater success.

Fostering Collaborative Groups
 

Group projects take on new meaning when you get students together to solve problems for others. You can help foster a creative atmosphere in your classroom by encouraging everyone to keep an open mind and hold back from criticizing thoughts during the brainstorming process. Later, during the testing phase of the process, you can help students begin to create fact-based critiques that help with product development.

If possible, try to put students with different learning styles and abilities in groups together to encourage diverse thinking. You can also drop into each group to help scaffold conversations and questioning if you notice that anyone seems to be holding back. Staying involved during the collaborative process helps you to use challenges as teachable moments that lead to more success.

Planning Effective Assessment Strategies 

The project-based learning strategies that you need to use for engineering and design thinking don’t always translate easily to standard letter grades. Instead, you’ll want to observe each stage of the project to identify skills that students are actively developing and those they master.

Educators often use rubrics for these types of assessments. Being able to point out the concepts you are looking for helps to guide students through the learning process. You can also show families the rubrics during progress conversations to demonstrate what you set forth teaching and how each student responded. As you assess the projects, remember that not every design plan will lead to success. Instead, it is more important to see the kids refining their questioning and creativity skills as they make each attempt toward finding solutions to their questions.

When you’re preparing engineering and design lessons, remember that the finished product is less important than seeing students develop their problem-solving skills. Be prepared to help scaffold your students’ learning and fill your classroom with books and other supplies that can serve as inspiration. Showcasing your students’ finished products during exhibition nights, open houses and online communications also helps them stay inspired to continue developing their engineering and design thinking abilities.