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.

National Teacher Appreciation Week is next week, but I’m giving an early shout-out to my fourth-grade teacher, Miss Fitzgerald. She made science a priority, and I loved it. We learned about tornadoes, measured plant growth, and hatched baby chicks right in the classroom. 

Here's another early Teacher Appreciation Week shout-out. All of us here at EiE send a huge THANK YOU to the hundreds of teachers and afterschool educators who have pilot-tested our elementary (and afterschool) engineering curriculum units, opened their classrooms to our video team, or collaborated with us in so many other ways.  

People call Bernard Gordon an engineering visionary—and no wonder! The founder of three pioneering tech companies played a leading role in developing transformative modern technologies that include America’s first commercial computer, the first “instant imaging” computer-aided tomography (CAT) scanner, and digital Doppler radar.

Having accomplished so much, Gordon is giving back to the next generation of engineers. With his wife Sophia, he established The Gordon Foundation to support innovative engineering leadership training and engineering education reform, and last week, EiE’s home institution, the Museum of Science, Boston, was pleased to announce a $5 million gift from the

The world faces grave environmental challenges—climate change, pollution, overpopulation, loss of biodiversity, or ozone layer depletion—that we can address only with STEM knowledge and skills. That’s why the National Environmental Education Foundation created Environmental Education Week (EE Week) to promote environmental learning for kids in grades K – 12.

EE Week (April 19 – 25^th) is almost here. Making a difference for the environment often involves engineering new technologies, so why not celebrate with some hands-on green engineering?

The four engineering modules listed here are from the EiE afterschool programs Engineering Adventures and Engineering Everywhere. They’re free, fun, and fit perfectly with the themes and goals of EE Week.