Exploring Materials
As you watch the video:
- Notice how the facilitator introduces the materials youth will be using.
- Watch for strategies you can use to help youth explore.
- Listen to how youth talk about the materials.
Now that you’ve watched the video, reflect on what you saw.
- What strategies would you like to use to encourage youth to explore materials?
- How can you set up engineering activities so youth are able to explore and select materials?
Explore Engineering Practices
Education Item
Making Meaning from STEM Learning
To make STEM experiences meaningful, youth need to make the STEM learning personal. Staff use “provocations” and “plussing” to challenge youth to think of new ideas based on what they have discovered while creating an object that can fly out of a wind tunnel.
Education Item
Affirming Youth During Retesting
Watch as staff encourage youth to investigate how they designed their package, what did or didn’t work with their design, and how they might adapt for re-testing. Staff support youth’s abilities and encourage youth to work with their team and develop their own solutions for re-testing their designs.
Education Item
Like A Real Engineer!
What happens when youth challenge a group of engineers to complete the STEM activity they did in their program? Listen as the engineers go through the same problem solving steps and align real-world engineering strategies to the challenge they have in building and designing vehicles.