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Writer's pictureDoneanne Soult

Turkish, Portuguese, and Spanish ESL Family Engagement Night Think Like A Mechanical Engineer

On Monday February 13, Turkish, Portuguese, and Spanish speaking Delran families participated in our first Family Engagement Night of 2023. The evening’s theme was “Think Like a Mechanical Engineer,” with several guided activities for all ages.

Our read-aloud of Rosie Revere, Engineer was translated and explained the engineering design process to our students. We discussed Rosie’s problem solving, and then were introduced to the problems we would solve that evening.


Problem 1: Squirrels eating all the bird food!

Squirrels can be persistent pests in the springtime, especially when bird feeders full of delicious seeds are around! After seeing a silly video where a squirrel tried many times before successfully stealing bird food from the feeder, our student engineers were tasked to create a “baffle,” or a squirrel-proof bird feeder.


Problem 2: Too much laundry on the floor!


Who likes cleaning their room and picking up dirty laundry? It would be a lot easier to have a device take care of that for you. Our student engineers designed Lego devices to pick up dirty clothes. Using the Lego Essentials kit, students created a variety of contraptions, from catapults to grapples to levers to solve the problem and pick up the “laundry” (cloth).


Participants received a copy of Rosie Revere, Engineer and a Lego Education Essentials kit to take home.


Mrs. Erica DeMichele led the evening’s activities, with translations by our teachers: Rahsan Saka (Turkish), Flaviany Leite (Portuguese), and Gabby Castelan (Spanish). Mrs. Hutchinson, Mrs. Baker, many of our STEM and ELL staff from all buildings, and our high school STEMbassador students, all participated in the evening as well, assisting families and setting up activities to ensure everyone had a fun and educational evening! Thank you to all of our families for participating, and to the Delran Education Association and Lockheed Martin for supporting an engaging, educational, and exciting evening. For more photos and videos, check out the DelranSTEM instagram and our Events tab for other upcoming opportunities.




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