Pick Your Own Mission with Sphero Blueprint – Middle School STEM Engineering Design Process

On the second day of my middle school STEM class, I wanted to introduce a simplified version of the engineering design process:

Ask → Imagine → Plan → Create → Improve

In addition, I wanted students to build with real materials, for which I picked Sphero Blueprint. These materials were new to my sixth graders, but were used last school year by most of my current seventh and eighth graders (except for some new faces). I was curious if my sixth graders could build using these without much instruction, but they did great!

Students first got to pick a *character and a mission. Their mission was to either rescue, transport, or protect their characters from a hazard. This gave students an authentic engineering problem to solve rather than simply asking them to build something with the Sphero pieces.

I used a worksheet to structure the engineering-design framework in a way that walked students through all the steps in my 45-minute class period. (Click here to get it free from TpT.) 

I loved it because students got to test their ideas, experience failure, redesign their prototypes, and ultimately develop a functional solution all on the second day of class. 

*I used my daughter’s Doorable collection for the characters. Any hard figurines could work, or students could even draw their own characters.