Share this resource with students to model how to think creatively and strengthen critical-thinking skills when solving problems.

After viewing, provide students with an engineering challenge. As they work through it, use the questions below to make connections to the steps of the engineering design process.

IDENTIFY THE PROBLEM

• What is today’s challenge?
• What is the problem you are trying to solve?
• How will you know if you’ve succeeded?

BRAINSTORM

• What are some different ways to tackle today’s challenge?
• Off-the-wall suggestions often spark great ideas. How creative can you be?

DESIGN

• Which brainstormed ideas are really possible, given your time, tools, and materials?
• What are some problems you need to solve as you build your project?
• How can a sketch help clarify your design?

BUILD, TEST, EVALUATE, AND REDESIGN

• What materials will you need?
• What can you learn by looking at other students’ projects?
• Why is it a good idea to keep testing a design?
• What specific goal are you trying to achieve, and how will you know if you’ve been successful?
• How does the design meet the criteria for success presented in the challenge?

SHARE SOLUTIONS

• What’s the best feature of your design? Why?
• What were the different steps you took to get your project to work?
• What was the hardest problem to solve?
• Did you have to do something a few times to get it to work? What?
• If you had more time, how would you improve your project?

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