We all know that it takes energy to provide us with the basics of shelter: heating, cooling, lighting, electricity, sanitation and cooking. To create energy-efficient housing that is practical for people to use every day requires combining many smaller systems that each perform a function well, and making smart decisions about the sources of power we use. Through five lessons on the topics of heat transfer, circuits, daylighting, electricity from renewable energy sources, and passive solar design, students learn about the science, math and engineering that go into designing energy-efficient components of smart housing that is environmentally friendly. Through numerous design/build/analyze activities, students create a solar water heater, swamp cooler, thermostat, model houses for testing, model greenhouse, and wind and water turbine prototypes. It is best if students are concurrently taking Algebra 1 in order to complete some of the worksheets.

Students extend their knowledge of the skeletal system to biomedical engineering design, specifically the concept of artificial limbs. Students relate the skeleton as a structural system, focusing on the leg as structural necessity. They learn about the design considerations involved in the creation of artificial limbs, including materials and sensors.

The 11th grade learning experience consists of 7 mostly month-long units aligned to the Common Core State Standards, with available course material for teachers and students easily accessible online. Over the course of the year there is a steady progression in text complexity levels, sophistication of writing tasks, speaking and listening activities, and increased opportunities for independent and collaborative work. Rubrics and student models accompany many writing assignments.Throughout the 11th grade year, in addition to the Common Read texts that the whole class reads together, students each select an Independent Reading book and engage with peers in group Book Talks. Students move from learning the class rituals and routines and genre features of argument writing in Unit 11.1 to learning about narrative and informational genres in Unit 11.2: The American Short Story. Teacher resources provide additional materials to support each unit.

In this unit, students will take a look at the historical vision of the American Dream as put together by our Founding Fathers. They will be asked: How, if at all, has this dream changed? Is this dream your dream? First students will participate in an American Dream Convention, acting as a particular historical figure arguing for his or her vision of the American Dream, and then they will write an argument laying out and defending their personal view of what the American Dream should be.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Students read and annotate closely one of the documents that they feel expresses the American Dream.
Students participate in an American Dream Convention, acting as a particular historical figure arguing his or her vision of the American Dream.
Students write a paper, taking into consideration the different points of view in the documents read, answering the question “What is the American Dream now?”
Students write their own argument describing and defending their vision of what the American Dream should be.

GUIDING QUESTIONS

These questions are a guide to stimulate thinking, discussion, and writing on the themes and ideas in the unit. For complete and thoughtful answers and for meaningful discussions, students must use evidence based on careful reading of the texts.

What has been the historical vision of the American Dream?
What should the American Dream be? (What should we as individuals and as a nation aspire to?)
How would women, former slaves, and other disenfranchised groups living during the time these documents were written respond to them?

BENCHMARK ASSESSMENT: Cold Read

During this unit, on a day of your choosing, we recommend you administer a Cold Read to assess students’ reading comprehension. For this assessment, students read a text they have never seen before and then respond to multiple-choice and constructed-response questions. The assessment is not included in this course materials.

In this lesson, students will closely analyze the structure of their document, identifying claims, reasons, evidence, and implied or explicit counterarguments. They'll also evaluate the argument made.

Students learn about water erosion through an experimental process in which small-scale buildings are placed along a simulated riverbank to experience a range of flooding conditions. They learn how soil conditions are important to the stability or failure of civil engineering projects and how a river's turns and bends (curvature, sinuosity) make a difference in the likelihood of erosion. They make model buildings either with a 3D printer or with LEGO® pieces and then see how their designs and riverbank placements are impacted by slow (laminar) and fast (turbulent) water flow over the soil. Students make predictions, observations and conclusions about the stability of their model houses, and develop ideas for how to mitigate damage in civil engineering projects.

When do the actions of one branch of the federal government unconstitutionally intrude upon the powers of another branch? This article surveys the history of this question in historic Supreme Court cases.

Students are introduced to the five fundamental loads: compression, tension, shear, bending and torsion. They learn about the different kinds of stress each force exerts on objects.

In this video from Common Ground and Cleaner Water, Tribby Vice, a Kentucky farmer, talks about the changes he has made on his farm to protect the water quality of the stream running through his property and the watershed in which he lives.

In this video segment adapted from NOVA scienceNOW, scientists in western Greenland explain how a glacier there is shrinking and moving faster due to increased melting.

Working individually or in groups, students explore the concept of stress (compression) through physical experience and math. They discover why it hurts more to poke themselves with mechanical pencil lead than with an eraser. Then they prove why this is so by using the basic equation for stress and applying the concepts to real engineering problems.

In this video segment adapted from NOVA, scientists investigate how farming along the Mississippi River impacts floods and what can be done about it.

This video segment from NatureScene features the area of the Congaree Swamp where the high ground and the flood plain meet. Learn how a few feet of difference in elevation on a floodplain can yield drastic changes in what you'll find living. [2:35]

This video segment from NatureScene features the area of the Congaree Swamp where the high ground and the flood plain meet. Learn how a few feet of difference in elevation on a floodplain can yield drastic changes in what youŰ__Ű__ŒŒÇll find living there.

In this adaptation of a video that high school students created in collaboration with the Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island, learn what's whack about our current food systems and the many actions individuals can take to address these issues.

Through a series of three lessons, each with its own hands-on activity, students are introduced to 1) forces, loads and stress, 2) tensile loads and failure, and 3) torsion on structures—fundamental physics concepts that are critical to understanding the built world. The associated activities engage students through experimenting with hot glue gun sticks to experience tension, compression and torsion; the design of plastic chair webbing strips; and problem-solving to reinforce foam insulation "antenna towers" to withstand specified bending and twisting.

This media-rich essay from NOVA Online describes the challenges of forecasting volcanic eruptions and includes information about specific cases.

This video segment from Nature describes how glaciers eroded the bedrock of IrelandŒë_í_Œ_ landscape.

This video segment from NatureScene examines the landforms of Death Valley and how they came to be.

See how the geology of the North Dakota badlands has changed over time in this video segment from NatureScene, featuring the landscape at Theodore Roosevelt National Park.