What a busy month at EiE! We're excited to launch NEW EiE Scholarships for rural and ELL teachers and announce a new Raytheon scholarship award. Check out our new Classroom Videos and EiE Teacher Tips. And let us hear from you: what creative tips do YOU have for teaching EiE? —Cynthia Berger, newsletter editor

Building on the impact of successful corporate-funded scholarship programs like the one established by Raytheon in 2011, EiE and the Museum of Science, Boston are investing $200,000 in a new scholarship program for elementary teachers.  

Past programs mostly supported educators in high-needs urban school districts. Some of the new scholarships will go to teachers in rural schools; others to teachers whose classes include a high proportion of English Language Learners. 

“EiE Scholarships are a direct expression of commitment to our core mission,” says EiE director and Museum vice president Dr. Christine Cunningham. “We want all students to have access to high-quality engineering education, and one way we do this is by providing the tools and training educators need to be successful teaching engineering.”

Applications are being accepted through Dec. 16, 2015. APPLY TODAY!

If you teach the EiE unit “Solid as a Rock: Replicating an Artifact” or “A Slick Solution: Cleaning an Oil Spill,” the new videos in our Classroom Video collection are sure to be a great resource for you!

Whether you’re new to EiE or have taught the lessons before and just need a quick review, Classroom Videos help you see what the lessons look like when real kids are working through them. Helpful reflection questions are also included.

The new “Oil Spills” videos were shot at Royal Palm Elementary School, Lauderhill, FL, in the fourth-grade classroom of Ms. Christina Hung. The “Artifacts” videos feature the third-grade classroom of EiE collaborator Laura Keeling at Tully Elementary School, Louisville, KY. We’re so grateful to these teachers for opening their classrooms to our videography team.

Review the new videos:

• Solid as a Rock: Replicating an Artifact 
• A Slick Solution: Cleaning an Oil Spill 

Read about the making of the EiE Video Collection  

Dr. Cathy Lachapelle, EiE’s research program manager, has been invited to join SNAP, the Stanford NGSS Assessment Project. 

A new initiative launched with support from Bechtel, SNAP aims to meet a critical need: Though 17 states have adopted the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), no proven strategies exist to measure whether students are actually  meeting NGSS's three-part performance expectations, which include a disciplinary core idea, a practice, and a cross-cutting concept.

"This is what makes the project so interesting—trying to address all three parts," Lachapelle says. The SNAP team aims to create a set of performance assessment templates that will work not just in California, but in other states that have adopted NGSS (with adjustments as necessary).

Lachapelle travelled to California in October to meet with the SNAP team. “We’ll be developing both formative and summative assessments, for both classroom and large-scale use,” she reports. “The EiE team has developed quite a few assessment tools already, most notably for our NSF-funded E4 study (Evaluating the Efficacy of Elementary Engineering), so it’s great to share what we’ve learned . . . and to see what others are doing.”

Need assessment tools for your EiE classroom? Browse EiE Assessments

The Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM), a longtime EiE professional development collaborator, offers a large (and handy!) collection of EiE Teaching Tips on their PD website. If you’re teaching our industrial engineering unit “Marvelous Machines: Making Work Easier,” here’s a great tip for Lesson 4.

During this lesson, students engage in the IMAGINE step of the EiE Engineering Design Process as they design an efficient system for lifting potatoes onto a factory belt.

Schedule this activity at the end of the day . . . and then give extra time the next day for brainstorming and imagining.

This approach reduces the pressure on students to roll with the very first idea they think of. You’ll see a greater variety of designs—and more imaginative designs.

Do you have an EiE teaching tip? Share it!

Launching an initiative to hand out $200,000 in scholarships, as EiE is doing this month, is no small task. Meet the EiE team member who leads the effort and makes it look easy: Dr. Chantal Balesdent.

When she’s not working with the team to plot strategies for recruiting applicants or refine evaluation rubrics, Chantal is an EiE PD provider. Maybe you’ve met her at an EiE workshop, guiding educators through hands-on engineering activities!

Chantal came to EiE with an impressive portfolio. While earning a Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Oregon, she was president of UO's Women in Graduate Sciences; under her tenure the group offered a variety of informal STEM activities for middle and high school girls. She was also a National Science Foundation GK-12 fellow. The prestigious program places grad students in K- 12 classrooms where they share their STEM knowledge—and learn about working with students and teachers.

Chantal is a native of Watertown, MA, so heading east after graduation to work in Boston was a homecoming. If you don’t meet her in an EiE workshop, you might see her on the soccer field; she plays for “Threat Level Midnight” in a city league.

We're pleased to share that the San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD) has been awarded a $37,000 grant under the Raytheon-EiE District Scholarship program. This is the 16th award for the program!

As part of the award, 25 district teachers attended a PD workshop last month. They returned to their classrooms with EiE Teacher Guides and materials kits. San Antonio educator Lisa Soll also attended an EiE Teacher Educator Institute (TEI); now she’ll be able to offer more EiE workshops for SAISD.

“As a large urban school district, we understand the importance of providing our teachers with instructional resources to inspire our students to pursue STEM careers,” says Becky Landa, SAISD director of science and curriculum management. “An early pathway to STEM literacy is critical, and involves not only our schools but our communities and business partners working together.”

The grant is part of a larger $2 million Raytheon initiative, launched in 2011, to help improve STEM education nationwide by expanding the use of EiE in high-needs schools and districts.