Asset-Based Pedagogies: Create Multimodal, Flexible Activities
Students interpret content and express their understandings in a variety of ways. These span listening, speaking, demonstrating, writing, and drawing.
“I Like to Draw My Plan”
Students describe their experiences with the Engineering Design Process, and the value of drawing their ideas. Watch & Reflect:
Reflection Questions
All students can benefit from having a variety of ways to express their ideas. The student in this video talks about liking to draw or write her ideas to remember them. Because days or even a week can pass before students return to their STEM program, recording ideas in a notebook helps them pick up where they left off.
Having different means of communicating ideas helps all students to be able to participate, regardless of their language ability. Students may also find it easier to draw a system model rather than explain it in words. They may need to talk through their ideas orally before documenting in a drawing or writing. Multimodal options make our STEM classrooms a more equitable place.
Students may need support in using the large tape measure to see how far their shuttle flew—tape measures may be a new tool and the distance measurement may be a new task. However, both are important to build for future engineering.
Students may have prior knowledge of aerodynamics, even if they don’t have technical language about it. Students may be familiar with how a paper airplane flies, or how birds steer through the air with their wings, or how the shape of some fish and mammals, including humans, can be streamlined to help them move quickly through water. They may have been on a plane that has too much luggage and needed people to exit before it could fly.
Related Engineering Practices: Work Effectively in Teams, Use a Structured Problem-Solving Process
Featured Unit: Engineering Rescue Shuttles