Hamden, CT - Incorporating engineering into an elementary school lesson plan is not so difficult after all.
That’s what five Quinnipiac University School of Education students and their cooperating teachers learned on Jan. 11, when they took part in the workshop, Engineering is Elementary,® a National Center for Technological Literacy project to enhance engineering and technology knowledge and to inspire the next generation of engineers, inventors and innovators.
Lucie Howell, director of the Bristol-Myers Squibb Center for Science Teaching and Learning at Quinnipiac, led the training which included students and cooperating teachers from Cheshire, Hamden, New Haven and Norwalk.
The attendees took part in a series of activities designed to expand their thinking about technology.
“Technology is anything human-made that is used to solve a problem or fulfill a desire,” said Howell, who led the workshop at the School of Education on Quinnipiac’s North Haven Campus. “Technology can be an object, a system or a process.”
Howell had the participants work in teams to determine how various everyday objects, including spoons, painter’s tape, Post-it Notes and highlighters, are all forms of technology.
Amanda Lubin, a student teacher at the Fair Haven School in New Haven, said the workshop taught her how to integrate engineering into her lesson plans and to think more broadly about technology. “Technology is just not cell phones and computers,” she said. “This workshop showed me how to make students think about the world and how it was not always the way it is today. Not everything we have today was always available to us. We’ve had to change and modernize.”
Andrew Turkewitz, a student teacher at the Bear Path School in Hamden, agreed. “This has been wonderful,” he said. “It has given me good ideas how to use engineering as a theme for integrated teaching. It really lends itself to teaching science and mathematics.”
In another exercise, the participants formed groups of four and were given index cards and tape to build a stand to hold a small teddy bear. At the end of the activity, each team displayed and tested its stand and discussed how they constructed it.
“I hope the student teachers and their cooperating teachers see how they can introduce more integrated STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) activities into their classroom activities,” Howell said. “I also want them to see how science, technology and engineering overlap. My hope is that they realize that these types of activities can add to the learning environment without increasing their workloads.”
Those who participated in the workshop were: Anne Marie Wintenburg, a teacher at Doolittle Elementary School in Cheshire, and her student teacher Jara Richards; Amy Warren, a teacher at Church Street School in Hamden, and her student teacher Megan Mourao; Lisa Kingston, a teacher at Bear Path School in Hamden, and her student teacher Andrew Turkewitz; Ann Marie Blake, a teacher at West Woods School in Hamden, and her student teacher Christina McGuire; and Monica Morales, a teacher at the Fair Haven School in New Haven, and her student teacher Amanda Lubin. Sally Davids and Karyn Privalsky, teachers at the Side By Side School in Norwalk, also took part in the workshop.
Quinnipiac is a private, coeducational, nonsectarian institution located 90 minutes north of New York City and two hours from Boston. The university enrolls 6,200 full-time undergraduate and 2,300 graduate students in 58 undergraduate and more than 20 graduate programs of study in its School of Business and Engineering, School of Communications, School of Education, School of Health Sciences, School of Law, Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine, School of Nursing and College of Arts and Sciences. Quinnipiac consistently ranks among the top regional universities in the North in U.S. News & World Report’s America’s Best Colleges issue. The 2013 issue of U.S. News & World Report’s America’s Best Colleges named Quinnipiac as the top up-and-coming school with master’s programs in the Northern Region. Quinnipiac also is recognized in Princeton Review’s “The Best 377 Colleges.” For more information, please visit www.quinnipiac.edu. Connect with Quinnipiac on Facebook at www.facebook.com/quinnipiacuniversity and follow Quinnipiac on Twitter @QuinnipiacU.
