Engineering Design Process 2nd Grade 3rd Grade Science & STEM Unit NGSS

Introduce your students to engineering and the engineering design process in a creative and hands-on way! This second and third grade engineering design unit addresses NGSS engineering standards as well as science and engineering practices through a series of high-interest lessons and labs.

This unit is also available bundled with a digital version and narrated lesson slides. CLICK HERE.

This 20-day unit centers around 6 engaging lessons in a content-rich teaching Power Point. The lessons are followed by journal response activities, partner discussion, and a hands-on lab for each lesson.

Each lab teaches a step of the engineering design process and builds on the previous lesson. A culminating design project at the end of the unit gives students the opportunity to apply what they have learned.

Thoughtfully detailed lesson plans make planning, teaching, and assessing easy. Focus wall resources, posters, objectives cards, and more support each lesson.

Unit Components

• Teacher Guide & Planning Binder with Unit Overview and Pacing Guide
• 6 Detailed, step-by-step, scripted lessons
• 6-Lesson teaching Power Point with extension activity slides after each lesson.
• 6 Hands-on engineering/STEM labs
• Guiding questions, learning target posters, lesson objective cards
• Full page vocabulary posters
• Full page engineering design process posters
• Student journal with follow-up practice pages for each lesson
• Quick Check Quizzes/Exit Tickets in 2 formats for each lesson (short written response and fill in the blank)
• Final Assessment/Unit Test with optional pages for differentiation
• Answer keys for all resources
• Unit materials list
• Standards alignment pages
• Related read aloud book list
• Video links to support each lesson
• Bonus bulletin board set

Lesson Topics

Lesson 1: What is Engineering?

Lesson 2: The Engineering Design Process

Lesson 3: Engineers Use Technology

Lesson 4: Natural & Man-Made Materials

Lesson 5: Biomimicry: Engineering Inspired by Nature

Lesson 6: Designing Solutions

Lab Experiments/ Investigations

Students explore and explain the steps of the engineering design process, identify examples of biomimicry, create diagrams, build models, evaluate designs, and plan and build a solution to a real-world problem.

· Draw a Blueprint with Measurements

· Create a Design Manual

· Evaluate a Design

· Gather Data & Graph: Natural and Man-Made Materials

· Build a Model Featuring Biomimicry

· Design a Wildlife Crossing

Included Engineering Task Card Centers

Reinforce science content as students practice math & literacy skills:

Applying vocabulary

Biomimicry Match

Math & engineering word problems

Please see the preview for details and pictures of all resources included in this unit.

CLICK HERE for a list of materials needed to do the investigations & STEM labs.

Note: This is a very large unit that downloads as a zipped (ZIP) folder with 4 separate files inside. You will need to “unzip” the folder to access and open the files correctly. Click here for directions to open a ZIP file.

Happy teaching!

Linda Kamp

Around the Kampfire

Additional 2nd and 3rd grade science resources:

Second Grade Science Yearlong Curriculum Bundle

DIGITAL Second Grade Science Bundle

Third Grade Science Yearlong Curriculum Bundle

DIGITAL Third Grade Science Bundle

Click here for all Second Grade science units

Click here for all Third Grade science units

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