Take a Ride! (Let's Move! Green Transportation #4)

In this lesson, students explore the engineering design process, transportation types, and energy use.

Step 1 - Inquire: Students play the digital game Ari's Wonderful Ideas.

Step 2 - Investigate: Students explore the steps of the engineering design process.

Step 3 - Inspire: Students use the engineering design process to design and build a transportation vehicle.

Positives

• Students use critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and creativity as they learn about the engineering design process. 

• Students engage in the scientific process to define a simple problem that can be solved through the development of a new or improved object or tool.

• Students have opportunities to collaborate with classmates and share their feelings as they design new transportation vehicles.

• This lesson supports the understanding that all humans can make a difference.

• This lesson features excellent vocabulary development. Vocabulary Cards are provided in the lesson.
• The lesson can be paused after the Investigate section and completed in two parts.
• Students will use what they learned throughout the unit concerning clean energy, locations around the world, transportation modes, and human choices as they build their transportation vehicles.

Additional Prerequisites

• This is lesson 4 of 4 in our K-2nd grade Let’s Move! Green Transportation unit.

• Prepare a recycled materials supply area that includes a variety of boxes, plastic bottles, juice boxes, cardboard tubes, straws, paper, adhesives, and a variety of art materials for embellishment. These can be items that are donated to your classroom by students and their families.

• If you are teaching this as a stand-alone lesson, you can use the Modes of Transportation activity in the Investigate section of Lesson #1 in the Let’s Move! Green Transportation Unit to teach students about modes of transportation.
  

Differentiation

• Students can share their feelings, including any natural frustration, after playing Ari’s Wonderful Ideas. This helps prepare them for the frustration people sometimes experience during the engineering design process.

• Students have several opportunities to share feelings and ask questions about the topic.

• Students can work in pairs or small groups to create their vehicles.

• Students can use an index card to record facts about their vehicles as you might see on a new car or truck.

• More advanced learners can create a stop-motion short film of their new vehicle in action.

Scaling up environmentally friendly transportation in schools is crucial for reducing global warming. This lesson helps students to develop ideas for a just transition to clean transportation by allowing them to investigate energy-efficient and low-carbon-intensive forms of transportation. It is advised to teach this lesson because it has all the necessary resources and has undergone fact-checking.

This resource addresses the listed standards. To fully meet standards, search for more related resources.

Supporting Standards

• Social Studies
  • U.S. History: America in the World - Geography, People, and the Environment
    • 6.1.2.GeoGI.1: Explain why and how people, goods, and ideas move from place to place.
• Science
  • ETS1: Engineering Design
    • K-2-ETS1-1. Ask questions, make observations, and gather information about a situation people want to change to define a simple problem that can be solved through the development of a new or improved object or tool.
    • K-2-ETS1-2. Develop a simple sketch, drawing, or physical model to illustrate how the shape of an object helps it function as needed to solve a given problem.

Note On Standards:

This lesson is aligned to SubjectToClimate standards. Review the aligned standards directly in the lesson plan document and teacher slideshow.