How to Develop a Hands-on Activity to submit to TeachEngineering.org#

OBJECTIVE - The new ShowMe standards (derived from NGSS) includes both neuroscience and engineering standards at several K-12 grade levels. The Mizzou NSF RET site is focused on providing training in research and curriculum development in ‘neural engineering’ (which combines both neuroscience and engineering) to K-12 teachers. With the new ShowMe standards cited, this training should be relevant to both teachers and to their students.

Research focus - covered in a separate section

CURRICULAR FOCUS – There is a requirement to develop one neural engineering curricular lesson/teacher for use in your classroom + NSF suggests we also submit it to TeachEngineering.org to seek external review, revise, and get it accepted. 

  • Visit this site to learn about requirements for submission of a hands-on activity to TeachEngineering.org. Check out all the steps and make sure you understand them well. Here is some information abstraced from the TeachEngineering about what they expect: 
    We are currently focusing on hands-on activities that allow students to engage in the engineering design process, or to engage in an activity that focuses on science, math, or technology but has a strong tie-in to engineering. 
    --- The hands-on activities that we accept encourage students to build, test, measure, or analyze something, preferably with a design focus. We have more information on how those activities are constructed, including an Annotated Exemplar and our Hands-On Activity template, here: https://www.teachengineering.org/getinvolved/submitcurriculum (see Step 3 and 4)
    --- Because TeachEngineering defines "lessons" as supplementary materials that offer an explanation for a hands-on activity, we only accept them on a case-by-case basis at this time—and only if they accompany a hands-on activity. You can see a good example of how we construct our activity-lesson pairs here: 
    Lesson - Engineering the Heart - Heart:  Valves: https://www.teachengineering.org/lessons/view/cub_heartvalves_lesson01
    Hands-on Activity - Saving a Life - Heart Valve Replacement: - https://www.teachengineering.org/activities/view/cub_heartvalves_lesson01_activity1

 

  • TO DO FOR TEACHERS: (i) Pull up the TeachEngineering.org site and browse through what they have to a get a good feel for the activities/lessons they host, (ii) under the 'Get Involved' tab in the top menu, select the pull-down option of "Submit Curriculum", (iii) follow steps 1 and 2, and wait till then approve your pitch, (iv) then submit the approval to the RET coordinators for their approval (to ensure there is a neuro component), and once approved, (v) develop the complete activity/lesson using the template provided at the TeachEngineering site (including equipment/supplies to be used and cost estimates) and check with TeachEngineering folks for their input/approval, (vi) come up with a timeline/plan for testing the curriculum in your classroom.  Then submit the full activity/lesson plan to the RET organizers, together with your equipment request, (vii) once the equipment arrives, you can test in your classroom and gather the data needed to submit the final draft of your activity/lesson to TeachEngineering.org. Please contact the RET organizers in case you have questions.

 

SAMPLE LESSON/ACTIVITY PLANS  -    5th Grade Activity (draft) - JW  (developed by Ms. Jessica White, 5th grade science teacher from Columbia, MO - being reviewed by TeachEngineering.org)

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RESOURCES FOR HANDS-ON EXPERIMENTS

will help guide you to research topics of interest to you from among those being pursued in the Lab.