STEM Concepts

●​ Design Brief Development

○​ Have students co-create or critique a design brief including goals, constraints, criteria, and success metrics. ○​ Teach students to maintain professional documentation—sketches, annotated thoughts, questions, and data—in an engineering notebook.

●​ Engineering Notebook Training

Brainstorming Solutions:

●​ Divergent Thinking Exercises

○​ Use rapid ideation (e.g., 5-minute sketch storm) and lateral thinking prompts to encourage multiple and creative solutions. ○​ Teach students to substitute, combine, adapt, modify, put to another use, Eliminate, and reverse to stretch ideas beyond the obvious. ○​ Use rubrics or scorecards to evaluate solution options by criteria such as feasibility, cost, or safety. ○​ Let students share their ideas and provide structured critique using sentence stems like “I wonder…” or “What if…”

●​ SCAMPER Strategy

●​ Idea Matrix or Decision Grids

●​ Gallery Walks with Peer Feedback

Build Prototypes :

●​ Modeling Workshops

○​ Provide exposure to both physical prototyping (e.g., cardboard, 3D prints, recycled materials) and mathematical modeling (e.g., calculating load or flow rates).​

●​ Sketching & CAD Integration

○​ Teach how to sketch orthographic, isometric, or exploded views by hand before transitioning to CAD software like Tinkercad or Fusion 360.​

●​ Scale Model Challenges

○​ Assign builds that require ratio conversions and spatial reasoning (e.g., scale houses, bridges, packaging designs).​

●​ Resource-Constrained Builds

○​ Introduce time, material, or financial constraints to simulate real-world conditions and prompt