Principles of Engineering
The curriculum is composed of units, which contain lessons and activities. The teacher guidelines and resource materials are integrated, via links, into the curriculum to make it easier for teachers to have access to the teaching tools needed to implement the course.
Each Unit begins with a Purpose, a listing of Concepts, Essential Questions, and Lessons for the Unit with a recommendation for Unit Evaluations. The Concepts are the broad learning objectives for the unit. The intent of the Essential Questions, in combination with the Purpose of each lesson that is an anticipatory set, is to create a framework for teachers and students to focus student learning. Course specific projects can be developed by the students to solve problems posed by the questions. The Concepts and Essential Questions along with the anticipatory set should be communicated to the students at the beginning of every Unit to establish the focus of the unit’s learning objectives. Each Unit is composed of lessons. Included in the Lessons are the Concepts specific to each Lesson; a listing of technology, science, mathematics, and English language arts national standards; Performance Objectives aligned with the national standards; Assessment suggestions; Essential questions aligned with the Concepts; Key Terms; a Day-by-Day Lesson plan; and a listing of instructional resources to aid instruction. Each of these components is clearly discussed and described in the Lesson Template and Activities, Projects, Problems Template found in the Course Implementation Suggestions section. Each Lesson is to begin with the instructor presenting the Lesson’s Purpose and Essential Questions to the students for them to think about and to develop solutions to, by the end of the Lesson. These questions are repeated for students at the end of an activity that is designed to help students focus their thoughts, learn skills, and apply those skills to solve problems, a key tenet of project-based learning. This curriculum is designed to be taught to high school students within a typical high school schedule. This means that a class which meets each day for 40 minutes, 175 days a year should be able to cover the content of this course. Some minor adjustments will need to be made by those schools that teach under a double block system. For the most part, this will simply entail combining two days worth of activities into one.
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