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  • Grades K-2

    Engineering Design

Students who demonstrate understanding can:

Performance Expectations

  1. Develop a simple sketch, drawing, or physical model to illustrate how the shape of an object helps it function as needed to solve a given problem. K-2-ETS1-2

    Clarification Statement and Assessment Boundary

A Peformance Expectation (PE) is what a student should be able to do to show mastery of a concept. Some PEs include a Clarification Statement and/or an Assessment Boundary. These can be found by clicking the PE for "More Info." By hovering over a PE, its corresponding pieces from the Science and Engineering Practices, Disciplinary Core Ideas, and Crosscutting Concepts will be highlighted.

Science and Engineering Practices

Disciplinary Core Ideas

Crosscutting Concepts

By clicking on a specific Science and Engineering Practice, Disciplinary Core Idea, or Crosscutting Concept, you can find out more information on it. By hovering over one you can find its corresponding elements in the PEs.

Planning Curriculum

Common Core State Standards Connections

ELA/Literacy

  • SL.2.5 - Create audio recordings of stories or poems; add drawings or other visual displays to stories or recounts of experiences when appropriate to clarify ideas, thoughts, and feelings. (K-2-ETS1-2)

Model Course Mapping

First Time Visitors

Resources & Lesson Plans

  • More resources added each week!
    A team of teacher curators is working to find, review, and vet online resources that support the standards. Check back often, as NSTA continues to add more targeted resources.
  • Picture Stem Designing Toy Box Organizers

    In this comprehensive STEM unit that utilizes science, math, technology, and language arts in 13-15 classroom sessions, students investigate standard units of measure and sort and classify objects according to their physical properties before applyin ...

  • Preventing Wind Erosion

    Students use the engineering design process to plan and create a windbreak that blocks wind in this lesson plan.  Within the lesson, students compare their design with their classmates’ designs. This lesson is part of a series of lessons a ...

  • Engineering Encounters: Sailing Into the Digital Era

    This resource combines The Engineering Design Process and technology using an iPad to have students create an electronic STEM journal documenting what they learned about wind and weather as they design sails for a model boat.

  • How many pollinators do you see outside? Activity: Pollinator Simulation

    This activity will help students understand the role of a pollinator by having them construct a model of an insect and a model of a flower to investigate how flowers are pollinated.

  • Engineering Motion

    This article provides insight on an a first grade derby car engineering activity.  First graders build derby cars while enhancing their communication skills. This lesson illustrates how the engineering design process, coupled with differentiatio ...

  • Catch Me If You Can!

    This resource is an introductory kindergarten STEM unit that focused on building a trap to catch a gingerbread man.  This activity integrates STEM with literacy as students read, write, learn about pushes and pulls, and design a trap for th ...

  • Seeing is Believing

    Please note this resource is an article found in the January 2016 Volume 53 Number 5 edition of NSTA's "Science and Children" Journal which can be accessed for free in the NSTA Learning Center for NSTA members.  The article is enti ...

  • Two Scoops Are Better Than One

    This lesson is the second day of an end of the unit task to address the Performance Expectation: Develop a simple model that mimics the function of an animal in dispersing seeds or pollinating plants.  This end of unit t ...

  • Can We Save This Mountain?

    This lesson was designed for students to investigate the impact that humans can have in controlling erosion.  Students plan, design, construct, and evaluate ways to slow or prevent landslides from changing the shape of the land.

  • I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Vanilla Ice Cream!

    In this lesson students design a vanilla plant pollinator.  This is an end-of-the-unit task, taking about 3 days to complete.  The students will view an amazing video that tells about the problems with pollinating vanill ...

  • Bee-ing an Engineer with Wisconsin Fast Plants

    This resource is an excerpt of lessons from the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Investigating Plants with Wisconsin Fast Plants Program. Students will explore Fast Plants' flowers and learn how flowers and their internal structures are related to ...

  • Invent a Backscratcher from Everyday Materials

    Being able to recognize a problem and design a potential solution is the first step in the development of new and useful products. In this activity, students create devices to get "that pesky itch in the center of your back." Once the idea ...

  • How Does Your Garden Grow

    A lesson plan based on the book Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! by Candace Fleming where bunnies keep getting a farmer’s vegetable garden and eating his vegetables. Students will design and build something to prevent the bunnies from getting into the veget ...

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  •  Slides from PictureSTEM presentation.pdf

    The slides from Dr. Moore's presentation on PictureSTEM curricula, Designing Paper Baskets.

  •  Invent a Backscratcher from Everyday Materials

    From TeachEngineering - Being able to recognize a problem and design a potential solution is the first step in the development of new and useful products. In this activity, students create devices to get "that pesky itch in the center of your back." ...

  •  Simple Snow Load Roof Model Demo: Which Roof Is Tops?

    From TeachEngineering - When you walk or drive around your neighborhood, what do the roofs look like? What if you lived in an area with a different climate, how might that affect the style of roofs that you see? Through this introductory engineering ...

  •  The Benefit of Inclined Planes: Heave Ho!

    From TeachEngineering - Students discover the scientific basis for the use of inclined planes. Using a spring scale, a bag of rocks and an inclined plane, student groups explore how dragging objects up a slope is easier than lifting them straight up ...

  •  Henrietta Maze Design Brief.docx

    This is the design brief for teacher use for the maze that kindergarteners will create (and re-create) for Henrietta.

  •  Maze Requirements.docx

    This is a handout to provide to kindergarteners as they are creating their mazes for Henrietta. It reminds them of the three criteria for the challenge.

  •  Straw Towers to the Moon

    From TeachEngineering - Students learn about civil engineers and work through each step of the engineering design process in two mini-activities that prepare them for a culminating challenge to design and build the tallest straw tower possible, given...

  •  "What is Engineering?" Resources & Lesson Plan

    Grade: Kindergarten. Duration: 1 hour. Type: Website with a lesson plan, video, and other resources. This website is FULL of amazing resources giving Kindergarteners an intro to Engineering. It provides a video, a read-aloud, discussion questions, ...

Planning Curriculum gives connections to other areas of study for easier curriculum creation.