Materials
Materials management is an important part of any hands-on project. Organizing materials before, during, and after an activity allows students to efficiently access the materials. Materials management also promotes fast clean up while keeping track of materials that can be reused and ones that need to be replenished.
Engineering design challenges add an extra level of complexity by also requiring that the students apply materials literacy. Materials literacy describes students’ comfort with the materials and equipment they will be using in an engineering design challenge.
- Clearly organize materials by type! Keep the materials in folders and bins so students can easily retrieve and gather resources. Consider recruiting older students to help organize and set up materials during their lunch break or other free periods.
- Plan ahead! Since challenges can take several class periods to complete, think about how to store the materials between classes.
- Embrace the mess! Have fun with the challenge and forgive yourself if your classroom gets a little messy.
- Let students play with the materials as part of their research.
- Show students pictures of incomplete projects as inspiration. Take snapshots as you practice the project and document students work for later years. Incomplete projects can help them see new options for how they could create an end product. If students only view finished projects, they might be tempted to just copy them.
- Have students who are comfortable with the materials help classmates who need extra support. Students can be more receptive to their peers and this can help productively occupy faster students.
- Some tools can be challenging for students to use. Plan ways to provide extra support for challenging materials. For inspiration, refer to Ms. Salchli helping students use the timer in this video (starting at minute 3:43).
Describe one technique you’ve used for materials management or materials literacy in your classroom that can be adapted for engineering design challenges.
