Novel Engineering |
Novel Engineering is a research-based practice that integrates engineering and literacy. Fifth grade students used developmentally appropriate, high-interest novels as the basis for a design challenge. Students started by reading their novels in book clubs, meeting regularly with their group to discuss the story.
After reading their novels, students learned about story elements. They worked in groups to identify four key story elements in their novels: characters, setting, theme, and conflict. Our class spent some extra time exploring theme with Ms. Addy. Students explored theme by looking at short stories, novels, picture books, and popular music. After working with the story elements of their novels, students identified a major problem that a character was having in their story. They worked in partners or individually to design a realistic solution to their character's problem, and engaged in the Engineering Design Process while reinforcing their literacy skills. Students designed a realistic solution, developed prototypes, went through rounds of critique, evaluated their solutions, and presented their work to other HTe students. In this section, you can find pictures that highlight one student's novel engineering process, as well as a portion of a lesson that Ms. Addy taught to the class about theme! In the spirit of doing the project with her students, Ms. Addy invented her own novel engineering solution! She worked with students who read Avi's "Poppy," and designed a lullaby that would help put a pesky cat named Dragon to sleep. Ms. Addy researched musical elements of lullabies to create the clip on the left, entitled "Dragon's Lullaby." |
Persuasive Writing |
During my Spring takeover, students also dug into persuasive writing. We first discussed the purpose of persuasive writing, and looked at some famous historical examples of persuasive pieces. We then critiqued samples of persuasive writing written by kids, and pulled out things that worked well (and things that didn't work so well.)
After we dove into persuasive pieces written by other people, we decided to write our own! As we began researching and designing hydroponics systems, we quickly realized that the initial cost of building a system can get pretty pricey. To help combat these start up costs, we wrote persuasive writing pieces asking local community members for donations to our project. Students combined their scientific research and knowledge of persuasive writing to create strong persuasive letters. We went through rounds of peer and self-critique to create beautiful writing work that we felt proud of. In the end, these letters generated incredibly kind donations that made our project possible! On the left, you can see parts of one student's writing process. This student came to me early in the writing process, and expressed that she was not a strong writer. We then had several conversations about how no one is a perfect writer with a magic pen if you only look at their first draft. Through the writing process, this student started to see herself as a capable writer. She was very proud of her final draft (seen to the left with the red border), and asked for extra copies of her letter to hand out to her family and neighbors! |