Science for All

Engineering Design Talk Moves

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There are lots of great resources for supporting productive classroom talk during science instruction…

But when it comes to engineering design I think we need some different questions and talk moves to guide students as they are collaborating to solve problems. I haven’t found a resource on “engineering talk”… so I created this engineering talk moves document.

This is very drafty and I would love some feedback. What is missing? What is redundant? Does this document even make sense? What needs to be improved to make this document useful for K-12 teachers?

The idea is that this 1 pager would be used by a teacher to guide students’ thinking as they are in the middle of collaborative work to solve an engineering problem.

I look forward to your feedback. Click HERE to download the document.

4 responses to “Engineering Design Talk Moves”

  1. Loren Willson Avatar
    Loren Willson

    Love the approach, Kirk! This is a great idea.

    Could you include some questions about measurement and mathematics concepts to go along with testing? Also, while most of the questions prompt open-ended responses, there are a few that could be answered “yes” or “no”.

    Could these be followed up with a “Why?” or be re-worded to elicit a more elaborated response?

    Keep sharing your innovations 🙂

    Loren Willson Secondary Curriculum and Professional Development Sumner School District 253.891.6078

    “The quality of our schools is a function of the quality of the conversations within our schools.”

    Reply
    1. science_4_all Avatar
      science_4_all

      Thanks Loren,
      This is great feedback. I’ll use then when I create version 2.0 of this tool.
      Kirk

      Reply
  2. Bill Weis Avatar
    Bill Weis

    Great stuff Kirk,

    This reminded me of a student talk workshop our district office facilitated.
    We took a set of potential of teacher questions for students and identified them as questions that fell into one of 3 categories: 1)norms and routines, 2)engagement strategies, or 3)deepening thinking, recognizing that all 3 are appropriate depending on the goal and place in the lesson.

    Our conversation was around our thinking around recognizing the strategic and appropriate places in a lesson to ask the 1, 2, or 3 category of questions.

    I am wondering if there is a place in this document for this? Color coding questions based on their category? It might help teachers differentiate between the types of questions to choose from.

    I am also wondering if some of these questions can also be visually connected to the engineering design process diagram to give a different sense of the appropriate timing of questions.

    Thanks for all your work Kirk:)

    Reply
    1. science_4_all Avatar
      science_4_all

      Thanks for the feedback Bill. I’m hoping to make some revisions to this document by the end of the month.

      Reply

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Hello,

I’m Kirk

Welcome to Science for All. This is a site where I share some of my favorite science and STEM education resources. I’ll also write the occasional personal post or opinion about education in general. I hope you enjoy your time here and that you always leave with something helpful.

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