Engineering & Engineering Design Process
Engineering & Engineering Design Process
Embedded Files
Project Management / Plan
Project Management / Plan
There is a Project Management Plan form that is required. The form walks students through the process of planning the project long term and then checking-in to measure progress in weekly increments along the way.
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City Essay
City Essay
Each year the topic of the competition changes. Several years ago it was transportation, then urban agriculture. This year it was "The Power of Public Spaces." In your City Essay, you must describe your future city (100 years in the future) in 1500 words or less. There is a detailed rubric - that teaches middle school students how to use a rubric - to guide your writing. In this essay, students talk about all of the city-structure-things they learned about while playing SimCity such as infrastructure and city services.
This essay includes a paragraph about how different types of engineers designed and built the futuristic elements of your future city -- guaranteeing that students have learned about different engineering careers.
City Model
City Model
Building the scale model of your futuristic city includes all of the things I love to do: planning, mapping, coloring, painting (especially spray painting!) hot-gluing, woodworking, and playing with battery-powered moving parts. The model is large (50" by 25" with a 20" max height) so get ready to give up all of the counter space in your classroom. The model should be all recycled materials (There is a $100 max budget and half of that can be taken up by your piece of 3/4" plywood.)
Scale is a difficult concept in middle school so we do several lessons on that before we get to the building stage just so that students bring the right sized objects. No matter how many times I tell them to not bring milk cartons and giant plastic water bottles, they do it anyway.
The City Model is assessed by engineer and/or architect judges on the day of the competition. They should use the rubric to guide them as they plan and build their model.
After constructing the model or model segments, each team will complete a slideshow (using the provided template) that showcases their city via photos, a link to a short video of the moving part, and brief descriptions of their work.
City Presentation
City Presentation
Students give a 7 minute presentation to a panel of engineer judges on the day of the competition. Teams are typically 3 students so it's just a few minutes of speaking for each team member. After the students give their presentation, judges get 7 minutes to ask them questions about their city, their learning process, engineering careers, etc. Here are some practice questions to help your students get prepared for this part of the competition.
Again, this presentation is assessed with a rubric that the students have ahead of time so they know what is expected of them all along the way.
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