Building Bridges
In this lesson, children will use a variety of open-ended materials to create engineering designs of bridges and then construct and test their designs.
Learning Goals:
This lesson will help children meet the following educational standards:
- Develop beginning skills in the use of engineering practices such as observing, asking questions, solving problems, and drawing conclusions
- Understand important connections and concepts in engineering
Learning Targets:
After this lesson, children should be more proficient at:
- Expressing wonder and curiosity about their world by asking questions, solving problems and designing things
- Developing and using models to represent their ideas, observations and explanations through approaches such as drawing, building or modeling with clay
- Using nonstandard and standard scientific tools for investigation
- Becoming familiar with technological tools that can aid in scientific inquiry
Step 1: Gather materials.
- The book, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, by Paul Galdone
- Blocks
- Linking cubes
- Magnetic tiles
- Paper
- Pencils
Step 2: Introduce activity.
- Gather the children in a large group and invite them to share what they know about bridges.
- After the children have shared their knowledge, introduce the book, The Three Billy Goats Gruff.
- Ask the children what the billy goats need to do in the story.
- Read the book and discuss why the billy goats need to cross a bridge to get to the other side of the valley to eat.
- Explain that the children will design and build their own bridges today.
Step 3: Engage children in lesson activities.
- Gather the children in small groups and invite them to draw a bridge that they can build with blocks and magnetic tiles that will hold 20 linking cubes or blocks.
- Ask the children questions about their bridges as they draw: "What will this bridge be used for? How will people/cars/others get to the bridge? What will the bridge go over?"
- After the children have finished their bridge designs, invite them to construct their bridges using blocks and magnetic tiles.
- As the children build their bridges, ask questions such as: "Does this look like your original design drawing? Do you think this will hold all 20 linking cubes?"
- After the children have finished constructing their bridges, invite them to observe all of the bridges and predict which bridges will hold 20 linking cubes.
- Invite the children to test out their designs by placing 20 linking cubes on their bridges.
- After all of the bridges have been tested, discuss the different bridge designs and analyze why some bridge designs worked to hold the linking cubes and others did not.
Step 4: Engineering vocabulary
- Analyze: To examine information to draw conclusions
- Conclude: To make statements about what was learned after an observation or experiment
- Design: To create a plan for something that will be built
- Predict: To guess what might happen next
- Test: To try out an idea to see if it works or not
Suggested Books
- A Book of Bridges: Here to There and Me to You by Cheryl Keely
- Bridges and Tunnels: Investigate Feats of Engineering with 25 Projects by Donna Latham
- Building Bridges (Young Engineers) by Tammy Enz
- Iggy Peck, Architect by Andrea Beaty
- Pop's Bridge by Eve Bunting
- Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty
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