Each Thursday on the EiE blog, we answer your questions about classroom engineering.

Q: I know that each Engineering is Elementary Teacher Guide comes with one copy of the storybook for the unit. Do I need to buy additional copies for my students to read?

A: The answer is, it depends on the ages and abilities of your students.

EiE storybooks are written at about a 5th-grade reading level; they're classified this way because of all the science and engineering vocabulary words in the stories!

If you teach upper elementary students (or students with advanced reading skills), a class set of storybooks allows each student to read independently. Or you might have your students read in pairs, or small groups.

Occasionally on the EiE Blog, we introduce you to the folks on our team and the work they do. Today, meet Richard Sutton, research coordinator. We’ve got a mountain of data coming in from a major, NSF-funded study, and Richard is the gatekeeper. Student assessments, journals, performance evaluations . . . more than 200,000 pieces of data must be entered into our system, and Richard makes it happen.

Richard is a noteworthy EiE’er for another reason. Over the past several months on the blog, we’ve been talking about engineering habits of mind. His personal story is a perfect example of the habit of mind of persistence.

Are you planning a STEM Night? Need a short video that introduces parents to Engineering is Elementary? Do you want to implement EiE at your school, but need to apply for a grant to fund the purchase? Are you hoping to offer an EiE workshop at a regional NSTA conference, but need help with your proposal?”

• The EiE Collaborator Toolkit, for professional development providers
• The EiE Outreach Toolkit, for parents, teachers, and administrators

The school year is coming to an end. When I say “summer slide,” do you picture fun on the playground?  Actually, summer slide is a serious concern. Students can lose up to three months of learning progress over the summer, according to the National Summer Learning Association. They may return to school in the fall with academic skills significantly lower than when they left the previous spring. The risk of a slide is especially great in STEM subjects.

And students from low-income families are particularly at risk; they’re less likely to be enrolled in summer camps and other formal education activities, which can be costly. Out-of-school time programs that serve diverse populations are making fighting the summer STEM slide a priority, with programs like Boys & Girls Clubs of America’s "Summer Brain Gain" and 4-H's STEM Camps. 

The new Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are bringing engineering into elementary classrooms, opening the door to new ways of learning but also posing a challenge when it comes to assessments. Engineering is a team effort, but most assessments are designed to be taken by individual students.

When kids work in a group, what can you say about each individual student with respect to level of engagement? performance? learning progress? EiE is developing new assessments that address these questions as a component of E4, an NSF-funded study that compares the effectiveness of two elementary engineering curricula.