Teaching the Engineering Design Process When Failure Is the Lesson

Looking for a simple way to teach growth mindset, productive struggle, and the engineering design process—especially during testing season? This episode shares a real classroom STEM challenge that shows how failure becomes feedback when students feel safe to try.

What if the word failure stopped feeling like a verdict and started sounding like a clue? A chaotic testing schedule pushed us to improvise, and a simple Piggy and Elephant story turned into a full-on design challenge with a big mindset payoff. Fifth graders faced a familiar, human problem—Snake wants to play catch without arms—and discovered how quickly curiosity returns when the stakes are safe and the goal is learning, not perfection.

We walk through the engineering design process in real time: clarifying constraints, sketching ideas, choosing materials, and building the first draft. The catch is that materials are uneven on purpose—cardboard and tape for one group, Legos or Play-Doh for another—because design is about trade-offs, not identical kits. When most prototypes fail on the first test, we resist rescue and reframe: failure is information. Students mine their results for patterns, name what almost worked, and plan precise changes. That shift from judgment to data turns frustration into momentum and makes revision feel like power rather than punishment.

Along the way, we share strategies any teacher can use to turn a read-aloud into a quick, high-impact STEM moment. You’ll hear how to define success criteria kids can own, turn scarcity into creativity, and guide reflections that build metacognition and grit. The best part? None of this requires perfect prep. It only asks for a clear problem, a safe space to try, and the courage to call a failed test what it is: the next step forward.

If you’re craving a practical way to spark engagement on long testing days or want language to normalize productive struggle, you’ll find it here—plus a free grit STEM story station to help you start tomorrow. Subscribe, share with a colleague who needs a lift, and leave a review telling us how you make failure feel safe for your students.

Links Mentioned in the Show:

February Freebie- GRIT

Chapters

• 0:00 Theme Of Reassurance And Permission
• 1:06 Failure Reframed As Information
• 2:40 The Fifth Grade Testing Dilemma
• 4:32 Launching A Piggy And Elephant STEM Challenge
• 6:30 Materials, Groups, And Design Process
• 8:45 Testing, Failing, And The Mindset Shift

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to One Tired Teacher, episode 281. Failure is not the enemy. So today we're going to continue along our February theme, which is reassurance and permission. And we're going to remember the quiet message of you are already enough. You don't need to perform to matter. So, and we're kind of looking at like STEM as a spark in our teaching. So that's what we're talking about today. I hope that you will stick around.

SPEAKER_01: 0:42

Welcome to One Tired Teacher. And even though she may need a nap, this teacher is ready to wake up and speak her truth about the trials and treasures of teaching. Here she is, wide awake. Wait, she's not asleep right now, is she? She she is awake, right? Okay. From Trina Deborah Teaching and Learning, your host, Trina Deborah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05

Hey. So today we are talking about failure not being the enemy. And in this case, we're talking about what a piggy and elephant STEM moment taught me about my students and even what it taught me. So sometimes the most powerful learning happens when we let kids fail safely. And remember that failure is information. It is not a verdict. So let's talk about, let's talk about this. So one year when I was the media specialist, I had a moment with my with a bunch of fifth graders. They were the ELL students that I had to do pull-out testing and testing and testing and testing and testing and testing, which I absolutely hated. Anyway, so I had these fifth graders. They were pulled out. We started testing. I gave them their as much time as they needed because that's on their IEP. And then when they were finished, I called back to the office and they said, well, they're not ready to come back to their class yet because the other classrooms hadn't started their test, which seemed ridiculous to me because I'm like, why did you have them start at a different time? Like now they are not only did they miss out on the learning that was occurring while they were testing, they are now missing out on what's, you know, on more learning because now they're waiting. So I was really annoyed. I felt very agitated. However, I didn't want the kids to know that. So I was like, all right, snap into action. What are we gonna do? Fifth grade, fifth grade. So I had been working on a 10-pack STEM story station bundle. And it was 10 STEM challenges based on Piggy and Gerald or Piggy and Elephant books written by Mo Willems. So I was like, I'm gonna try these out with fifth grade. And I know what you're thinking. You're like, fifth grader, that's too old for them. Maybe, maybe not, but they loved it. And I think kids of all ages love piggy and elephant. And I also feel like it's important to keep reading to kids, even when they are in fifth grade, maybe even in when they are adults. That's a special tradition I still have in my own house. I read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas' every year to my grown children, my son, who's 21, and my daughter, who's 25. And by the time this episode comes out, she will have gotten married. So that's exciting. Anyway, um, it's important. It's an important thing to do. Anyway, it's actually a non-negotiable in my mind. So that's yeah, that's how I feel about that. Anyway, so I read a story to them, and then I posed the problem in the story as a challenge for them to solve. So we worked through the engineering design process by asking questions about the challenge. I allowed them to like form groups and they were doing some turn and talk and asking questions about, you know, how can we solve this problem? And the problem was that Snake didn't have any arms and Piggy and Gerald were playing catch and Snake couldn't join him, and he wanted to. And he couldn't, and how are they going to allow him to play? So that was a problem. How can we solve it? So then kids were asking questions and then they were brainstorming or imagining solutions, and then they had a chance to kind of jot that down and think about what that could be. And then I ended up having like passing out different materials to different groups because I was in the media center. I had, I probably had, I had a decent amount of materials, but not like a classroom set of materials. So I had, I gave one group cardboard and tape, another group got Legos, another group got Play-Doh, another group got like any leftover, like straws, pipe cleaners, cardboard construction paper kind of stuff that I had. So that's how I dealt with the material situation, which can be often the things that we think hold us back, but they don't have to. I could have even gotten the trash can and we could have used done some recycling. Excuse me. Anyway, so they built solutions and then they tested the solutions because once you've built it, you need to test it and see if it actually will work. And guess what? It didn't. It didn't work for everyone. It worked for one group, but it didn't work for all of them. And I was, and I was like walking around talking to the kids, and I'm like, oh man, I'm like, it failed. And they're like, failed? They acted like I said it was the worst thing ever. And I'm like, oh, I'm like, failure isn't the definition of, it isn't the verdict. It isn't the thing. I'm like, it's information. It helps us know, okay, this didn't work, but what can I use from it that might have worked, or where am I on the right track, or how do I move forward? And it was such a powerful conversation about failure with this group of fifth graders. And I think having conversations like this with kids is so metacognitive and also so beneficial. And I think we need to do it more often. And when we give kids the opportunity to fail in a safe location where they are loved and supported, and where failure is just a part of life, and then we learn to move forward, it can make all the difference. I don't know why I'm having this trouble with my throat. So excuse me. Okay. So we learned a lot. Then we revised, I gave him time to revise, and then we reflected upon our the whole process. And it was such an incredible experience because we want to remember that failure is information, it's not shame. People say the word failure, they think of it as the end of the world. It doesn't have to be the end of the world. And in fact, if we don't allow our kids to practice, you know, productive struggle, they don't know how to do it when they fail. And guess what? We all fail. Like we just all do. It's part of life. So it's so important for our kids at any age to feel comfortable. And I think it was really important for fifth graders because they were in this testing situation. And this was a valuable lesson in amongst or among or like in that moment of time as well. So failure doesn't mean to stop, it means to pause, to learn, and try again. Failure is not the enemy. This actually this actually reminds me of a February freebie that I have been giving out, and it is a grit STEM story station. I made it using After the Fall, which is an adorable book that has to do with Humpty Dumpty and like what happens after he falls. And it gives kids a safe way to struggle, revise, and see failure as information. So if you want to grab it, you can grab it at Trina Deborah Teachingandlearning.com forward slash grit. Just one word, grit. So that's a thing that I want you to remember that sometimes we have these moments in our classroom where teaching feels so important. And we don't often, this was not a planned lesson. This was not something that I had planned to do with my fifth graders, but I had to like think in the moment, what am I gonna do with them? Because they had all this time before they went back, they had just started the test when I found out that they weren't, you know, that they had just started. And so it was an in-the-moment thing. And I think it can be an in-the-moment situation in our classrooms as well. It doesn't require a massive amount of time. We can turn STEM challenges into anything. Anything that we're reading about that is a problem in the story can become a challenge for kids. What I love about it is that I didn't give them solutions. I didn't tell them they all had to make a contraption for you know snakes' arms. They came up with solutions and they were all different, and they were all really smart solutions. Again, some of them didn't work, and so they had to revise, but they did. They revised. So I just think these kind of moments can be really powerful and they honestly make teaching, they make it bearable. They make it, that was a really enjoyable moment with them. And it wasn't enjoyable watching them struggle during a test. That wasn't enjoyable. That was a terrible feeling, and I felt like I was torturing them and that I was torturing myself. And then when I got to do something that was creative and collaborative and where they had to think critically, not just testing format style, it was a game changer. So I hope that you have game changer moments in your classroom and using STEM as a spark. All right, until next time, sweet dreams and sleep tight.