Ellie the Engineer and the Engineering Design Process

Students will be able to list and describe some steps of the engineering design process, and will also be able to classify examples as one of the three steps: think, make, and improve.

00:00:55
A prototype is a model of the solution an engineer wants to build. Prototypes are faster and easier to make than full sized projects. Prototypes are made so that engineers can test their design without spending time or money on the real solution.

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00:02:06
Think, Make, and Improve are the three big steps of the engineering design process. All of the other steps from the other pictures can be grouped together under one of these three steps.
Think When we think as engineers we describe our problem, imagine solutions, and plan our design.
Make When we make, we are building, programming, composing, or creating our project and making it real. The first part of making is creating a prototype or rough draft.
Improve When we have built our solution, we still need to improve it. This is when we test our prototype and we look for more problems that we can solve so that our design is as good as it can be.

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00:06:26
Which statement best describes the story?
- Ellie and her friends went on an adventure and found buried treasure.
- Ellie and her friends wanted a place to play, so they found someone else's treehouse.
- Ellie and her friends wanted a place to play, so they designed and built a treehouse.
- Ellie and her friends built a treehouse and it was perfect right away.