Engaging students in conversations around science and engineering design can be challenging. Sparking such conversations during field trips at an interactive science center has additional challenges. First, students vary considerably in age from day to day: science center employees might work with first graders one day and sixth graders the next. Second, students are on the field trip for a short time. Therefore, they must establish norms without spending much time teaching expectations around science and engineering discourse. These challenges motivated the authors to implement a framework that would work effectively across age groups and immediately engage students in discussion and dialog during their Engineering Explorations, 50-minute engineering design activities implemented as field trip programs in our museum classroom. This framework adapts well to classroom settings and is easily implemented as a lead-in to any number of science or engineering design activities.