Reader's Theatre: Engineering and Physics PBL

by John R. Walkup, Ph.D.

I was cleaning out an old hard drive and I came across an old play on physics and engineering I wrote back in 2010. I originally designed the play to embed life lessons into project-based learning, with the idea that some sort of production company would make an animation series out of it.

At this point, I have no idea what to do with it. In this sense, I know what Brian Wilson went through when he began recording his album Smile, for which he poured a ton of effort but never released.

Rather than simply discard it, I figured someone out there could find something useful about it. Or, maybe not.

Here is the forward:

I wrote this story to allow students the opportunity to experience the trials and tribulations of a group of students solving a nontrivial engineering problem. The thought processes involved in overcoming barriers and the role in which team members interact in such a setting form the most important aspects of the story. Physics concepts primarily play a secondary role, although readers may learn some important physical principles reading the story.

I want this story to serve as a semester-long reading. At the beginning of each scene I have noted the physics principles that teachers should introduce to students before reading the scene. Some students may want to read ahead; I would not discourage it.

The focus is not aimed at the scientific method, as the problem the students are attempting to solve is mainly an engineering one. As stated previously, this story centers on thinking, not doing. 

However, many behaviors expected of professional scientists appear throughout the story. For example, the characters in the story encounter the issue of secondary and primary sources of information and the need to approximate and interpolate.

As a society, we have long decided that students need to graduate from high school with certain features that extend beyond mere content knowledge. Although I cannot list every feature, I think the following serve as a good start and formulate much of what the students will experience reading this story:

1. a continuous pursuit of knowledge
2. higher-order thinking skills
3. an understanding of basic business principles
4. the ability to plan and communicate
5. an appreciation of ethics

Common techniques used in engineering design — including approximation, interpolation, and extrapolation — appear throughout the story. Such techniques are critical to design in all subject areas, not just physics and engineering. However, the approach used by the crew does not employ the full power of algebra. Although an engineer would assign variables to every factor involved in the stunt and solve a large number of simultaneous equations, doing so would make this story overly technical.

Just like many scientists and engineers, issues that affect the way real scientists and engineers perform, such as business ethics and moral dilemmas, present themselves throughout the story. The characters struggle and make mistakes. Some mistakes they catch; others they don’t. Even the very notion of success remains arguable. Despite it all, they persevere; because of it all, they learn valuable lessons.

Thought processes, not dogma, drive the goals of reading this story. As such, teachers should carefully avoid pushing their own value systems onto students when fielding student queries and responses. Keeping this in mind, students should answer questions involving ethics as they see fit. There is no right or wrong presented in this story, just multiple ways to arrive at a conclusion. Over time and with enough cognitive development, students will formulate a mature world view of their own. Sometimes this world view will coincide with our own; sometimes it won’t.

This story is tough sledding as an unguided activity. Teachers should employ the periodic stops featured in this story to chunk the content to manageable levels. The Teacher’s Guide features lesson content that will help students a great deal absorb the lessons without overloading their concentration.

Metacognitive modeling (the think-aloud) forms the most predominant teaching strategy employed in this story. By allowing readers to read the thought processes involved in problem-solving, they can often learn to develop similar thinking skills on their own. In a sense, the story teaches readers to learn to think by example.

Repetition, especially through the method of restatement, also serves an important role in this story. The characters repeat basic concepts numerous times, further entrenching them into the reader’s long-term memory. By not always understanding what is taking place, the character Ike needs constant restating (dumbing down) of the principles stated by the other characters, which also allows readers additional opportunities to learn and reinforce their own memories.

The narrator continuously asks the reader to summarize what has taken place. Summarizing is an important teaching method identified as one of the most effective available to teachers. To maximize its effectiveness, teachers should place students in small groups and give them ample wait time to discuss before being called on to answer.

One portion of the story discusses the issue of life-longing learning and its relationship to intellectual curiosity. Although this issue is only a minor aside to the story plot, teachers should discuss it at length. Intellectual curiosity drive success, turning mundane exposure to academic content into a valuable learning experience.

Please note that most of the content is dialog and is meant to sound that way. Just like in real life, the crew members do not speak in complete sentences and often use highly colloquial prose.

---

Seeking training at your school or district centered on Cognitive Rigor or Depth of Knowledge?  Call me at (559) 903-4014 or email me at jwalkup@standardsco.com. 

We will discuss ways in which I can help your teachers boost student engagement and deep thinking in their classrooms. I offer workshops, follow-up classroom observation/coaching, and curriculum analysis to anywhere in the country (and even internationally).

Follow me on Twitter at @jwalkup.