Worksheets Don't Grow Dendrites

I teach two sections of 9th grade Introduction to Engineering Design class. In the beginning of the curriculum, I teach the engineering design process. It's a six step process that can be very dry. This week, I tried one of the teaching strategies that we learned in M.Ed class.

To begin the lesson, I showed the students a picture of the six step design process on the projector screen. I had them copy the picture and the name of each step into their Evernote program on the computer. As I explained each step, the students typed notes into Evernote. We then watched a 20 minute video called "The Deep Dive" that shows a team from the company, IDEO, redesign the shopping cart by going through the design process. This video is great, and the students are really interested in the process. After the video, I had the students write the six steps in their notebook and then draw a picture of each step. This is the new teaching strategy that I tried. The students had to draw a picture of something that would help them remember each step. They could draw a picture of each step of the process as they saw it on the video. They could draw pictures of themselves going through the six steps. They could draw pictures of other things that helped them remember the process. After they were done drawing the pictures, I called on students to explain what they drew for a specific step, and then I had them share their drawings with the person sitting next to them.

This is the first time I've tried the drawing and artwork strategy and hope it helps the students remember the six step design process and what happens in each step of the process.