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CUE 2007
Integrated Teaching & Learning (ITL) Program:
TEAMS Fellows — Taking the Mystery Out of Engineering for Kids

In an open-ended biomimicry engineering design activity, third-grade students are inspired by the characteristics of plants and animals to envision new products and creations.

With desks pushed to the edges of the classroom, several 10-year-olds are busy and intensely focused in the clearing in the middle of the room. Scattered on the floor are hundreds of triangles and bars made from toothpicks and gum drops. About half the students are hastily taking apart the triangle shapes and making bar shapes; the other half are doing the opposite. It seems like a race.

As part of an air pollution unit taught by an engineering TEAMS fellow from the Integrated Teaching and Learning Program, these fifth-grade students are creating "gumdrop molecules," representing the making and disassembling of oxygen (O₂) and ozone (O₃) molecules in the atmosphere. Some of the students represent "ozone makers" and others are "UV light" or "CFCs."

Through this large-group, interactive ozone depletion model, youngsters explore the dynamic roles of the upper atmospheric protective ozone layer, the sun's UV radiation, and harmful, human-made chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Students are physically and mentally engaged while learning about science (chemistry, molecules, atmosphere, cycles), using mathematics (data gathering, calculations, graphing), and making relevant associations to the real world (sunburns, ozone protection, CFCs, modeling, engineering). As part of the lesson, students learn ways that engineers are involved in designing things to help others.

Engineering student fellows use TeachEngineering.org—an NSF- sponsored digital library collection led by ITL Program Co-Director Jacquelyn Sullivan—to select highly engaging K-12 curricula that present science and math in an applied engineering context. Besides providing a way to cement learning fundamentals, presenting material in an engineering context broadens students' views of what engineering is and what engineers actually do.

Through their weekly interaction with the CU fellows, these K-12 students in Lafayette, Colorado, are forming their own definitions of engineering and engineers. As one fourth-grade girl commented about the female engineering fellow who leads her class in fun activities every week, "I had no idea engineers could wear make-up." Engineering role models in classrooms show youngsters that engineers are much more creative and imaginative than just "being good at math and science."

Using a hot plate, milk, and cocoa powder to represent the Earth's core, mantle, and crust, eighth-graders learn about heat transfer and how convection currents in the mantle cause plate tectonics.

The weaving of an engineering context through all the lessons and activities on a wide range of science topics also introduces the idea of engineering being pervasive in their daily lives, and important to humanity and our planet. In this way, engineering becomes a field to which youngsters can relate personal interests and valuable endeavors.

Teachers and principals are enthusiastic and welcome the grades 3-12 TEAMS partnership in their schools. As middle school Principal Isobel Stevenson shared earlier this year, "I was in Mr. H's class yesterday and was very impressed with the TEAMS fellow. He was showing a video on space missions, and fielded a ton of questions afterwards (including a particularly perceptive one from me). He did a really great job."

Diana Wiant, director of the Centaurus High School's Pre-Engineering Academy, expressed her opinion of the TEAMS program by saying, "The day CU walks away from our high school engineering program is the day I run out the door; we just couldn't do this without CU Engineering."

For more information visit: http://itll.colorado.edu