Just some quick thoughts on teaching young students about engineering. Please add additional ones in the Reply section
Introducing young students to the engineering process opens doors to creativity, critical thinking, and innovation. By exploring hands-on activities and problem-solving, they cultivate curiosity, learn resilience, and develop teamwork and communication skills. This practical approach connects education to the real world, preparing them to become future innovators and problem solvers.
Benefits:
- Cultivating Curiosity and Creativity
- Encourages imaginative exploration and fearlessness in experimenting.
- Fostering Critical Thinking and Analytical Skills
- Develops methodical problem-solving abilities and pattern recognition.
- Encouraging Perseverance and Resilience
- Shifts perspectives on failure, teaching the value of persistence.
- Nurturing Teamwork and Communication Skills
- Fosters cooperation, effective communication, and respect for diverse viewpoints.
- Connecting Education to the Real World
- Shows the practical applications of subjects, bridging theoretical knowledge with real-world solutions.
Teaching young students the engineering process is an investment in their future. By empowering them with creative thinking, resilience, and teamwork, we equip them to thrive as problem solvers and innovators in an ever-changing world.
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I wholeheartedly agree with all of this! I think the open-ended, hands-on nature of engineering challenges helps students to practice some really valuable skills. In addition to the ones you mentioned here, some others come to mind for me as well:
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Spatial skills and spatial language - being able to envision an idea in your mind, and communicate that idea, whether on paper with a sketch, or verbally, can be challenging for students, but is important to so many different areas of learning.
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Cognitive flexibility - being able to hold your idea in your head, hear another perspective, and change your idea because of that new information is a foundational skill that can be very hard to ‘practice’ and develop. Collaboratively designing something engages students in this process in a meaningful way.
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Growth mindset - being able to persevere through a building challenge and find moments of success can be hugely powerful to students developing their sense of self, and their identity as a learner. Open ended projects, like those involved in engineering challenges, are a great motivator, and can help foster a growth mindset as students are exposed to these challenges and work through them over time.
What other benefits have you seen in engaging young students with engineering? @Tina_Dietrich @Laura_Mackay @Danielle_McCoy
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I love the aspect of collaboration and communication! The students that I work with often have learning/communication needs and being able to socially/verbally express robotics and the Engineer Design Process in a way that they understand is HUGE! They are learning valuable life lessons that they will take with them as they grow up and attend higher education or obtain employment.
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I love this topic! Last school year I worked with 3rd graders and they really benefited from the spatial reasoning that VEX focused on. @LORI_COLANGELO I agree with everything you said. The biggest one I think is failure. Teaching young students that it’s OK to make a mistake and how to problem solve to fix mistakes and not give up. Really…how many of us as adults can say we have never had failures or made mistakes??? I personally make numerous mistakes everyday! I think that is a life lesson in itself that young students can learn from the engineering process.
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YES YES YES, and if they learn it in the younger grades think of the effect of their learning attitudes in the upper grades, when they are trying out career paths and making big decisions about their futures.
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