Engineering Teacher Resources

Engineers solve problems. As a STEM teacher in the 21st century, you guide students to solve problems every day. Meet the next generation of engineers!

Get their creative minds working with elementary engineering projects, such as a popsicle stick bridge activity or a Play-Doh circuit project. A NASA lesson encourages young engineers to design their own rocket launch platform, while sports fans can predict and test bounce heights of various balls. 

Looking for something else? You’ll find it in a full unit plan on elementary STEM construction and engineering activities.

Challenge middle and high schoolers with a soda can steam engine project to practice the principles of steam engines. Have them control variables to a virtual heat machine to find the most efficient setup—and then show a video on the second law of thermodynamics that explains how they can never create an engine that reaches 100% efficiency. 

Connect engineering with biology in a project that uses biomimicry as a model for student projects. You can also explore the future of genetic engineering, including its benefits and risks, with an informative science video.

Just like the advances of engineering, the instructional possibilities are endless. Use our teacher-selected resources as inspiration or download them directly for implementation. The future is here—and Lesson Planet is, too!

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The Engineering Process

For Teachers 3rd - 8th Standards
Discover the ins and outs of the engineering process from Crash Course Kids series of 17 informative and engaging videos. Each video offers insightful details into the world of engineering, captivating animation, and kid-friendly humor...
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8 Items in Unit
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Adventure Engineering Challenge: Asteroid Impact

For Students 6th - 8th Standards
Oh, no! An asteroid is on a collision course with Earth!. The challenge, should your students choose to accept it, is to design underground survival caverns to shelter people for one year. Over the course of eight lessons, engineering...
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8 Items in Unit
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Inquiry in Action: Fifth Grade Chapter 5 - Engineering Design

For Teachers 5th Standards
Inquiry in Action: Fifth Grade Chapter 5 - Engineering Design is comprised of a single project-based assessment. The assessment helps highlight the importance of prior knowledge as individuals design a floatation device for a cell phone....
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8 Items in Unit
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TeachEngineering: Engineering Nature - DNA Visualization and Manipulation

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Two lessons teach young biomedical engineers and biologists how it is possible to visualize complex biomolecule structures. In the first lesson, scholars research specific imaging technologies, and in the second, they learn about...
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10 Items in Unit
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Moon Munchies: Human Exploration Project and Engineering Design Challenge

For Teachers Pre-K - 6th Standards
NASA and the International Technology and Engineering Educators Association, or ITEEA, present young scientists with a challenge: design and build lunar plant growth chambers so that astronauts can grow edible plants on the moon. Class...
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18 Items in Unit
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Rockets Educator Guide

For Teachers Pre-K - 12th Standards
The 17 resources in NASA’s Rockets Educator Guide allow young scientists and engineers to engage in experiments as they examine images of more than 2,00 years of rockets. Scholars then read articles that provide an overview of the next...
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11 Items in Unit
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TeachEngineering: Next-Generation Surgical Tools in the Body

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Young engineers design laparoscopic surgical tools in an 11-lesson unit aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards. The first lesson introduces the class to the abdominopelvic cavity. Teams learn what it is like to perform...
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32 Items in Topic
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STEM Ed Hub: Design Resources

For Students 3rd - 6th Standards
Engineering design-based activities make learning science fun. Young engineers design dams, lifeguard chairs, musical instruments, candy bags, and much more. They also use measurement skills to solve the mystery of the missing pin. Each...
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22 Items in Unit
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Up, Up and Away! - Airplanes

For Students 5th - 7th Standards
Oh, if only Sir Isaac and Bernoulli could see us now. Even Orville and Wilbur would be amazed by what engineers have designed using their ideas. Next generation engineers put these principles to use as they use what they learn about...
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10 Items in Unit
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Simple Machines

For Students 7th - 9th Standards
A collection of five lessons and activities introduce young engineers to simple and compound machines. Groups use the engineering design process to design a Rube Goldberg machine to move a circus elephant into a rail car, a pulley system...
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28 Items in Unit
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TeachEngineering: Keepers of the Gate

For Teachers 9th - 11th Standards
Red Rover, Red Rover, send young intracellular engineers right over! In this unit of the TeachEngineering series, scholars tackle the challenge of determining why Grandmother’s suggestion of gargling with salt water to relieve a sore...
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5 Items in Curriculum Set
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Inquiry in Action: Fifth Grade

For Teachers 5th Standards
The Inquiry in Action: Fifth Grade Curriculum set contains five chapters, comprised of 16 lessons, activity sheets, videos, and other resources to help explain science concepts to young learners. In Chapter 1 - Matter is Made of Tiny...
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18 Items in Unit
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TeachEngineering: Forces All Around

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
Imagine using a hot glue gun or a glue stick to demonstrate tension, compression, and torsion! A six-part series of lessons and hands-on activities teach young engineers about the fundamental facets of engineering design: forces, loads,...
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27 Items in Unit
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TeachEngineering: NanoTech - Insights into a Nano-Sized World

For Teachers 7th - 12th Standards
Ferrofluids, quantum dots, and good nanoparticles. Young material scientists and engineers are introduced to the field of nanoscience with two lessons and four activities. Topics covered include an introduction to nanotechnology and its...
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7 Items in Unit
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TeachEngineering: It's a Connected World - The Beauty of Network Science

For Teachers 7th - 10th Standards
A series of lessons and activities show scholars how engineers use graphs to understand large and complex systems. The first lesson provides the beginnings of graph theory by introducing set theory, graphs, and degree distributions of a...
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11 Items in Unit
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TeachEngineering: Next-Generation Surgical Tools in the Body

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Designed for high schoolers, the 11 lessons and activities in the “TeachEngineering: Next-Generation Surgical Tools in the Body” unit module prepare STEM teams to design prototypes of laparoscopic surgical robots. After an introduction...
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9 Items in Unit
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Sustainable Design and Biomimicry in a Desert Ecosystem

For Students 9th - 12th Standards
Challenge young engineers to design a sustainable guest village in Arizona’s Saguaro National Park. A collection of four lessons and five activities provide designers with all the information they need to complete the challenge of living...
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6 Items in Unit
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The Physics of Fluid Mechanics

For Students 9th - 12th Standards
In this collection, Pascal’s law, Archimedes’ Principle, and Bernoulli’s Principle aid young engineers in understanding the physics of fluid mechanics. Armed with the knowledge of how forces are applied to fluids, scholars design...
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5 Items in Topic
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The Tech Challenge 2016 lessons

For Students 4th - 8th Standards
Challenge young flight engineers to design a flying device for Ant-Man, balloon crafts with neutral buoyancy, paper airplanes from different paper types, hoop gliders, and a launcher for ping pong balls. Although designed for the 2016...
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5 Items in Topic
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Design Squad Event Guide

For Students 4th - 8th
Everything you need to plan an event for young engineers can be found here, including activities, an event checklist, tips for working with youth and volunteers, signage, certificates, and an evaluation form. Kids make a rubber...
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6 Items in Unit
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Solar vs. Wind Energy

For Teachers 7th - 8th Standards
Power up! A series of six lessons introduce middle schoolers to the different types of energy. PowerPoints, activities, and hands-on experiments teach young electrical engineers the difference between energy and power, as well as the...
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43 Items in Unit
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TeachEngineering: Bone Mineral Density and Logarithms

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Young biomedical engineers are challenged to discover what Bone Mineral Density (BMD) is, how to obtain a BMD image, and how the process is related to the x-ray field. They also investigate how medical researchers use BMD images to...
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28 Items in Unit
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TeachEngineering: Android Acceleration Application

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Introduce young engineers to the software development design process used in app building. After watching a video tutorial, groups are challenged to build an accelerometer app for an Android device and design an app utilizing the GPS...
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42 Items in Unit
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TeachEngineering: Photovoltaic Efficiency

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Many factors affect the power output of photovoltaic (PV) solar panels. Four lessons and activities provide young engineers with the background information they need to design, build, and test photovoltaic systems.

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