Engineering Teacher Case – Amy
Amy’s STEM unit, designing cardboard chairs, was two
months long. Each one of her classes was 90 minutes.
There were 18 8th grade students in this class. In her class,
students needed to have a product; an adult-sized cardboard
chair that could hold 150–200 pounds, by the end of the
unit. On the first day of her class, she spent half of her class
explaining what students needed to accomplish in this unit
by giving students a monthly schedule. She also asked
students to find their partners to work together on this
project for two months. She asked students to decide their
roles, such as a designer, a manager, or a builder in this
project. She told students, ‘‘Your roles do not mean that
you only responsible for that part of project. It means you
have to collaborate with others in order to complete the
project.’’ She also brought her lesson into a real world
situation. The chairs were built for a local charity (thus the
name ‘‘Chair-ity’’ for her unit). Therefore, she told her
students, ‘‘We are doing this for real. So, if your chair
meets the standards, we will place your chair up for
auction.’’ After the introduction, she let her students use
computers to do background research for their chairs in the
rest of the class.