First graders build derby cars while practicing communication skills.
By Nicole Tuttle, Wendy Stanley, and Tracy Bieniek
46
Science and Children
T
he first graders in Tracy Bieniek’s class cheered and
jumped for joy as the derby car—designed and built
by one of their peers—rolled down the ramp and traveled over seven tile squares along the floor. This was the
team’s third, triumphant design. Although their first attempt consisted of little more than a cardboard box that slid
down the ramp and stopped, their final attempt rolled gloriously down the ramp and never looked back.
Tracy has always loved to teach science. Despite this,
she went years without bringing any engineering lessons
into her classroom. Now that A Framework for K–12 Science Education (NRC 2012) emphasizes the need for more
engineering education, teachers like Tracy are looking to
expand their professional repertoire. For many teachers,
engineering can be intimidating; teachers receive little
training in engineering, particularly those teaching early
elementary students. In addition, the necessity of differentiating for students with special needs can make engineering more challenging to teach.
Tracy has 28 students in her first-grade classroom, including six students with special needs—one in the English
as a Second Language (ESL) program. Accommodating
these students during an engineering lesson was a major concern for her. But since 2013, Tracy has participated in NURTURES, a professional development program that helped
her develop the expertise to design and implement science
and engineering inquiry lessons. Through this program, she
felt inspired to make engineering an integral part of her science instruction. Nicole and Wendy, members of the NURTURES staff, have worked with Tracy as she developed expertise in teaching engineering. The lesson presented in this
paper illustrates how the engineering design process, coupled
with differentiation, can work for a population of students
with diverse abilities.
A Framework for K–12 Science Education (NRC 2012)
notes that the engineering design process involves three processes, which are not necessarily linear: defining problems,
designing solutions, and optimizing solutions. In this lesson,
students worked collaboratively to define constraints, design,
build, test, and redesign derby cars. In addition, an emphasis
on building discourse skills throughout the school year allowed students to succeed throughout this project.
claimed, “I knew that one would win!” This video acted as
an important motivator for students and generated excitement for the design challenge.
The class then defined specifications for their cars.
They discussed what their cars would look like, what kind
of force they would exert on their cars, and how to measure their results. Tracy first asked the students, “What
should our cars look like?” She probed students’ responses
by asking them why they responded the way they did and
asking whether other students agreed with them. For example, when discussing what the cars should look like, the
following exchange occurred:
Student (S): It needs to have wheels.
Teacher (T): Why?
S: So the car can move.
T: How many wheels should our cars have?
S: Four
S: Two
T: Why do you think that?
S: It can’t have two wheels because then it would be a motorcycle.
T: Agree or disagree, and why?
Define the Problem
This engineering challenge was preceded by a lesson on
motion; for an online overview of that lesson, see NSTA
Connection. To begin, Tracy showed her students a video
of Pinewood Derby Car Races (see Internet Resource).
The students were very excited about the races; they
picked out their favorite cars, cheered them on, and ex-
January 2016
47
S: It should have four wheels because cars on the road all
have four wheels.
Through similar discussion, students agreed that their
cars should also have a body and that it should be about 12
inches long to mimic the derby cars. They then discussed
where to test their cars, deciding that the cars would roll best
on the tile because, in their experience, the carpet was too
bumpy and the cars would not travel as far. After making
many suggestions and taking a vote, the students decided
to use the big dry-erase board as a ramp. Asking students to
explain their reasoning is a crucial part of these discussions.
The last question that students tackled was how to decide whether their cars were successful. This is a critical
step in engineering investigations, and the class discussion
demonstrates that even young students can think about
how to evaluate their own work.
T: We know what our cars have to have, so now let’s figure
out what we should measure.
S: How far it goes.
S: How fast it goes.
S: How long it goes.
T: Tell me how we should measure it that way.
T: What about how fast it goes? Explain how we can
measure that. (No responses.)
T: If we can’t think of how to measure how fast it goes,
should we use speed as a measurement?
Several Students - No.
T: Agree/disagree? (Students agreed not to use speed.*)
T: Let’s discuss our other two ideas.
S: We could all have rulers and see how far it went.
S: We could count the squares to see how far it went.
T: We need to pick one idea. Thumbs up for distance.
(All thumbs up.) Explain why you chose distance.
S: I think it would be easier.
T: Why?
S: We could just count the colored squares on the floor to
see how far it went, then we wouldn’t need rulers. (After a
vote, students agreed to measure distance in this manner.
Common Core Math Standard 1.MD.2.)
* Measuring speed is not developmentally appropriate at
this level, although if students are curious, it can lead to
a rich discussion.
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF THE AUTHORS
S: We could use a ruler to tell how far it went.
S: We could use your timer to see how long it goes.
Students assemble and organize their materials.
48
Science and Children
Engineering Motion
This group’s initial design (below) was unsuccessful—the wheels did not move. Their redesign (above)
featured movable wheels.
the students brought in recyclable materials, which may vary,
for the project (Figure 1). A classroom aide or parent
volunteer can be helpful to assist the students with hot
gluing, drilling holes, cutting, passing out duct tape
while the teacher is interacting with each group. Each group
then gathered all of their materials into “shopping bins”—
aluminum tin pans work great for this purpose.
Tracy formatively assessed each group by asking students
probing questions (Figure 2, p. 50). With these discussions, a
teacher can assess both whether the students are on track with
their design and also help push students’ thinking beyond the
superficial. For example, one group was testing different ma-
F IGU RE 1.
Sample materials list for building
derby cars.
Design Solutions
Tracy assigned the students into mixed-ability groups of
three or four based on the needs of each student, such as
academic strengths and weaknesses, behavior, and special
needs. In their groups, students discussed what materials
they would need to design their derby cars and drew designs
in their science journals (NGSS Performance Expectation
K-2-ETS1-2 and Science and Engineering Practice Developing and Using Models). These designs were inspired by
the students’ ideas of what a car should look like. Tracy and
Large bins (for holding supplies), a variety of
recyclable materials such as cans, round lids,
cardboard tubes, boxes, plastic bottles, Pringles
cans, cardboard, empty Scotch tape reels, straws,
caps from dried-out whiteboard markers, balls,
washers, clay, small dowel rods, duct tape, hot
glue, knife or strong cutting instrument, drill, and
decorations, such as decals and glitter.
Materials should be clean and free
of sharp edges. Have an adult handle hot
glue, knives, cutting instruments, and drill.
January 2016
49
F IG URE 2 .
Questions to ask students during
discussions.
Explain/tell me how it works.
Tell me what you are thinking.
How does that work?
How did you decide...?
How do you know that...?
I see...What’s happening here...?
Tell me why.
What causes...to happen?
What do you think would happen if...?
What is the problem you are trying to solve?
What evidence helped you to arrive at that answer?
Would someone like to add on?
Do you agree or disagree and why?
Repeat what s/he said in your own words.
What would you change? Why?
50
Science and Children
terials for their potential as wheels, which demonstrated that
those students were on track to create a productive design.
Tracy took the opportunity to push their thinking by asking
them which materials would make the best wheels and why.
This prompted the students to think about the properties of
the materials they had chosen and offer evidence to defend
their decision. Alternatively, Tracy also talked with a group
who felt strongly that they should glue wheels directly to
the body of their car—a common misconception among the
students. She knew that their design would fail, but she let
the misconception stand and then used questions to help students think through their redesigns later.
Students with special needs may require extra help
with this step. For example, a student in the ESL program
along with a student with poor communication skills required additional scaffolding to succeed. Tracy and the
in-class support teacher worked closely with these two
students by having them draw and use one- or two-word
phrases to get their point across. In general, these strategies of rephrasing questions and physically representing
meanings can be helpful for scaffolding the lesson for students with special needs.
Tracy took the opportunity to push their thinking
by asking them which materials would make the
best wheels and why.
Engineering Motion
Optimize Solutions
Students tested their cars on the class ramp, recording in
their science journals how far each design traveled. In general, these first designs did not succeed. Five of the seven
groups built cars with wheels that couldn’t roll. After each
group had tested its design, the class discussed together
how they were going to change their cars, explaining why
the materials they initially thought would work didn’t work.
Their initial “failures”—and eventual successes—demonstrate just how important it is to provide students with the
chance to redesign their cars. Not only does it teach students
an important lesson about the value of learning from failed
designs, but also analyzing the problems with a design can
spur student thinking. These are important conversations
to have with this age group to create a positive classroom
environment during the design process.
Team 1 provides an example of the redesign process at
work. As their first car slid down the ramp rather than roll,
they realized that their wheels did not move. Tracy used
discourse to guide students to better designs. She began by
asking the team to explain why the car did not roll. They
responded that the wheels didn’t move because some of
them were taped to the body. They also said that the straws
were too big to fit in the holes in the body and couldn’t
move. As a solution, Team 1 decided to remove the tape
and use something else to keep the wheels on. They also
decided to use skewers instead of straws because the skewers fit better in the holes on the body of the derby car, and
to put the duct tape right on the skewer to keep the wheels
from falling off. Finally, Team 1 decided to change the
wheels from pill bottle caps to pop bottle caps because the
pill bottle caps were too big. Their excitement with their
final, successful car was infectious. Team 6 underwent a
similar transformation from a car with glued-on wheels to
a design with axles to the addition of weights that helped
the car travel farther. Most teams required this second redesign, and these were some of the cars that traveled the
farthest.
A critical step of this lesson is to help students consolidate meaning about their results. To do so, Tracy made a
video of each groups’ derby car using an iPad app called
Perfect Video (see NSTA Connection). These data could
also be presented in chart, graph, or picture form. The
January 2016
51
video showed each derby car at the end of building and
redesigning, and a video of each test run.
Each student group then explained the process they
went through when designing, building, and testing their
derby car, while the whole class watched each group’s video. Classmates were encouraged to ask each group questions about the derby cars. These final presentations offered a chance for a summative assessment. Tracy looked
for students to coherently explain their design process,
including why they did what they did, and to use evidence
to explain why particular designs failed or succeeded.
Overall, the groups succeeded in designing and building
cars that rolled down the ramp, and the assessments demonstrated that most of these young students could explain,
in detail, why they made the design choices that they did.
Tips for Teachers
Student discourse played a critical role in the success of
this lesson. Students needed to build their skills for participating productively in class and small-group discussions.
Tracy worked from the beginning of the year to teach and
model good talking skills with her students—taking turns,
politely agreeing and disagreeing with each other, answering open-ended questions, and explaining why. Also, because these discourse techniques apply across disciplines,
Tracy worked with her students on discourse throughout
the school day. In the end, making time to redesign their
initial cars, differentiating the engineering process where
appropriate, and encouraging students to explain their
thinking led to a successful engineering challenge for Tracy’s first graders. ■
52
Science and Children
Nicole Tuttle ([email protected]) is a research
scientist with the NURTURES program, and Wendy
Stanley is an implementation coach with the NURTURES program at The University of Toledo. Tracy Bieniek is a first-grade teacher at Larchmont Elementary
School in Toledo, Ohio.
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to acknowledge Charlene M. Czerniak,
Joan Kaderavek, Robert Mendenhall, and Scott Molitor, the
co-principal investigators of the NURTURES project, whose efforts made this work possible. This material is based upon work
supported by the National Science Foundation award number
1102808.
References
National Research Council. 2012. A framework for K–12 science
education: Practices, crosscutting concepts, and core ideas.
Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
NGSS Lead States. 2013. Next Generation Science Standards:
For states, by states. Washington, DC: National Academies
Press. www.nextgenscience.org/next-generation-sciencestandards
Internet Resource
Pinewood Derby Car Races
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC5qRw7QhLA
NSTA Connection
To download the lesson plan, visit www.nsta.org/
SC1601.
Engineering Motion
Connecting to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States 2013):
K-2-ETS1. Engineering Design
www.nextgenscience.org/k-2ets1-engineering-design
The materials/lessons/activities outlined in this article are just one step toward reaching the Performance
Expectations listed below. Additional supporting materials/lessons/activities will be required.
Performance Expectations
Connections to Classroom Activity
Students:
K-2-ETS1-2. Develop a simple sketch, drawing, or
• drew diagrams of their planned derby cars and
physical model to illustrate how the shape of an object
built them based on those drawings.
helps it function as needed to solve a given problem.
K-2-ETS1-3. Analyze data from tests of two objects
designed to solve the same problem to compare the
strengths and weaknesses of how each performs.
• recorded data about distance derby cars traveled
and used data to determine success or needed
changes.
Science and Engineering Practices
Developing and Using Models
• created drawings as models of the cars they built
(and the cars themselves were models of real cars).
Analyzing and Interpreting Data
• measured the distance their derby cars traveled
and assessed what changes to their designs might
allow the cars to travel farther.
Disciplinary Core Ideas
ETS1.B: Developing Possible Solutions
Designs can be conveyed through sketches, drawings,
or physical models. These representations are useful
in communicating ideas for a problem’s solutions to
other people.
ETS1.C: Optimizing the Design Solution
Because there is always more than one possible
solution to a problem, it is useful to compare and test
designs.
2-PS1-A Structure and Properties of Matter
Different Properties are suited to different purposes.
• used their drawings and models in discussing their
design with the class.
• investigated the properties of different materials
and determined which would perform as needed.
• gained a deeper understanding of how to create a
successful car through redesign after experiencing
poor results.
Crosscutting Concept
Structure and Function
• determined needed changes in the function and
structure of their cars.
January 2016
53