Rosie Revere Engineer: Teaching Engineering with a Picture Book

As a former elementary teacher, I love to use picture books to teach students. Now I use picture books for teaching pre-service and in-service K-12 teachers about science and engineering. My new favorite picture book for teaching engineering is Rosie Revere Engineer by Andrea Beaty. This book makes a perfect companion to another favorite Those Darn Squirrels by Adam Rubin. (See previous post on Those Darn Squirrels HERE.)

Rosie Revere Engineer is the story of a young girl who is afraid of failure but is eventually encouraged to share her inventions by her great-great aunt Rose. This book teaches us about collaboration, failure, and persistence (grit). I can imagine this book being a cornerstone of a lesson on establishing norms for engineering tasks.

I will be putting together some lesson plan ideas for this picture book (and others) over the summer …so stay tuned. HERE are some lesson ideas provided by the author.

Below is a video of a Rosie related project sponsored by STEM Outreach NIU… unfortunately, this video does not use the Engineering Design process from NGSS.