Monroe Consolidated School
5th Grade, Fall 2023
By: Breanna Fearon
Throughout the fall, the 5th grade students worked with Amanda from WMSI to create a Novel Engineering project for the book Hatchet by Gary Paulsen.
The Novel Engineering Process! [Tufts University Center for Engineering Education and Outreach]
While the students were reading the book, they highlighted problems that the main character, Brian, was experiencing that an engineer might be able to help with. By the end of the book, the large list of brainstormed problems was narrowed down to five. The 5th graders collaborated to pose a list of possible solutions to this problem.
Doing so they were aware of the constraints to keep in mind when designing a solution that they could make in the classroom that would help Brian with his problem. Within this project they identified a problem within the story, collaborated with others in the class to think about what solution could be designed for the problem, then built it, and tested to ensure stability and functionality of solving Brian’s problem.
This project emphasized the engineering design process, and allowed the students to redesign, test, and rebuild many times. They were then able to present their findings to other grades in the school. The students thoroughly enjoyed this project, and it was a great learning experience for them to come up with the problem, think of the solution, build, test, and present their solutions!
