Strategies
The strategy that I will use to ensure comprehension will involve Blooms Taxonomy, which has five specific skills that will be used throughout this unit. They are application, comprehension, knowledge, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. These levels of Cognitive skills will be utilized in the effort to help my students understand bridge design. While discussing the content I will discuss all five strategies. Starting with bridges in general, we will review some basic bridge requirements. There are two phases in building a bridge. The first phase is the planning phase. People from the community together with experts in bridge planning will review all criteria for creating a bridge. Surveyors will take measurements of the terrain and map out the site's topography. Next there is the bridge designer who is in charge of the project. The architect helps the designer and makes sure it will be aesthetically pleasing. The soil engineer drills the holes to get samples of the soil. The aerial photographer takes pictures from above. This helps the surveyor. The traffic and safety expert look at traffic issues related to safety. The environmentalist makes sure the wildlife and wetlands are not disturbed.
The second phase of bridge building is the building phase where the structural engineer approves the design and the contractor bids on it. The approval of the design can be very simple in design or complicated. Simple by being just a beam bridge or could be a unique and artistic bridge. The bidding is when you want to select a company to make the bridge. The inspector comes to the bridge site to report any problems. This for safety of the bridge. The contractor is in charge of building a bridge. This is the person or company who agreed to build the bridge He or She assigns a superintendent who orders all of the material to make the bridge. Then they give the jobs to foremen to be in charge of specific jobs. Those jobs can be steel workers or seeing over the masonry. Masonry is the stone or brick work. The very important people are the workers. They construct the bridge. These are the people that work together to make a bridge exist. They put the bridge together. I plan to introduce bridges by talking about the jobs and giving out jobs in the classroom. I want to make four different teams that will complete a task. I will achieve this through giving out building blocks and have each the teams design a bridge. This will be done in lesson three. This will begin with giving them an idea and experience that making a bridge is a team effort. I will now look the four Ts in respect to the strategies and how they will be applied.
Truss
The first T will be the truss. The history of trusses will be presented as it relates to the making of bridges. The earliest trusses were made of wood. The Greeks made trusses for their dwellings. In 1570 Andrea Palladio published I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura which contained instructions for wooden trussed bridges. The truss bridge was made in the form of a wood trestle. When the railroad came along strong bridges were designed and the truss design evolved after many trail and errors. There are several types of truss bridges. What makes the truss work is that the vertical and diagonal members work together to distribute the forces (compression and tension). This is this tug of war game I spoke about in my introduction. You may think of compression as being squeezed and tension stretching like a rubber band. The top part of a truss is in compression and the bottom is tension. The truss is made up of triangles. The triangles distribute the load and transfer it to the supports. Triangles are used in trussed bridges to add strength and stability. To see some examples of a truss go to www.matsuo-bridge.co.jp/english/bridges/basic/truss.shtm
The five Blooms Taxonomy strategies are:
* Knowledge
* Comprehension
* Application
* Analysis
* Synthesis
* Evaluation
The strategies will use verbs to describe the six skills listed above such as recall, manipulate, demonstrate, discuss or choose. The poster that will accompany this unit is back in the appendix A. Benjamin Bloom an educational psychologist divided educational objectives into three domains. They are affective, psychomotor and cognitive. We will deal with the cognitive domain. This domain is considered to be learning in action, because it is based on verbs. A verb in its grammatical context is a word that shows action.
To look at the five strategies that will apply to learning about the truss I will use a verb to describe the specific action that will be taken. Under the domain of knowledge I will have the students recall the different types of trusses. We will make a Warren truss with Popsicle sticks. We will also list other truss types in our vocabulary. The comprehension factor of trusses relates to an identification of a truss. This skill can also be accomplished by acting like a truss in a group setting. The next strategy is application. The students will use their journals to draw trusses. The journal will help with interpreting the structure visually. I would like to start with the Warren truss. They will also make puzzles of a truss. We will make an analysis through comparing different bridges and distinguish between different trussed bridges by their name. Synthesis will take place when we take our field trip to visit several different bridges. We will compare and design our own bridges by use of the photo essay. Evaluation will be through identifying some of the important parts of a bridge
Truss/ History
The history of three bridges in Pittsburgh will be presented and explained. These bridges are from the truss family and are historical artifacts. I will use the history as way of building a foundation for the unit. Pittsburgh bridges are very important due to the three rivers. Pittsburgh is composed of small communities in which the bridges connect them. The city of Pittsburgh claims to have 944 bridges and 59 rivers Three primary rivers, the Monongahela, the Allegheny, and the Ohio intersect and create a land section called Point Park. These rivers flow through and connect the communities together. Pittsburgh's first river bridges were made of wood and they have long since been replaced. Most bridges were built from 1924-1940. Some of the building of highways triggered more construction of bridges. The second half of the century resulted in more than one hundred bridges being built. The building of bridges is important to Pittsburgh as well. Pittsburgh is known for its bridge companies dating back to the early 1800s. Several important industrialists and designers had their companies in the city. Andrew Carnegie owned the Keystone Company which later became the US Steel Company. This company help builds all of the bridges around America. In the 1800s George Ferris own a company in this city named The G.W.G Ferris Company. They inspected the bridges and made parts for bridges. The American Bridge Company is currently fixing bridges across the country. These companies tell the rich history of Pittsburgh and how it relates to bridges. The first bridge I will look at is the Smithfield Street Bridge. The image of it:
(Wikipedia 2003) This Bridge is designed in the style of a steel lenticular truss. It has some wrought iron members. It crosses the Monongahela River and has a pedestrian walkway on both sides. The first bridge erected at this site in 1818 was a wooden covered bridge. It was the first river crossing bridge in Pittsburgh. The wooden bridge was destroyed by fire in 1845. The designer for the replacement bridge was Gustav Lindenthal built in1881-1883. He worked for the Keystone Company. This bridge was restored three times. John Roebling was the engineer who was in charge of restoring the original design. It was restored again in 1985 to the Lindenthal original design. It is the oldest river bridge in Allegheny County. This bridge is one of the oldest truss bridges in the United States and has the longest span for its type. One of its many awards is the United States National Historical Civil Engineering Landmark and it has received many local and national rewards.
The second bridge is a combination bridge. The Sixteenth Street Bridge crosses over the Allegheny River. It is a steel trussed arch with a suspended deck. The original covered wood bridge at this location was destroyed by fire in 1919. The current bridge was built in1923, ornamented with bronze structures. Architects Warren and Wetmore designed it. Pedestrian walkways with two way traffic lanes are included in the design of this bridge. The Pittsburgh Arts commission was heavily involved in the design process because they wanted more artistic involvement with the designing of the bridges.
The third bridge is the McKee's Rock Bridge. It crosses over the Ohio River. This bridge is a steel trussed arch. This bridge stretches one and half miles. It is multi structured and was built in the early 1900s. Now the students will look at these bridges through the strategies in blooms taxonomy when giving the history of the bridges. Knowledge will be experienced through naming the three bridges as well as recalling the types of bridges. The students will show comprehension through describing the bridges as they put it into their own words. We can also compare the differences of the bridges. The application part will take place as the students draw illustrations of the bridges. At the field trip to visit the bridges the students can relate to experiencing the bridge by walking under them and driving over them. As we walk under the McKee's Rocks Bridge, we will explore its structural design. They will get the chance to see the truss design up close. Walking on this bridge will show the lattice design in the arch. The analysis will also take place during the field trip to the bridges. We will get a chance to distinguish between the three bridges. The synthesis will be through designing their own bridges and doing a skit using all of the jobs that were named to construct a bridge. This is the skill of schematizing bridge design through role playing. The evaluation process will be through the choosing of a bridge that they like out of the three and do a painting of it. The painting w ill be labeled by the students and put on a rubric.
Triangle
The triangle is a polygon, because all of its sides have straight lines. It has three corners and three sides the type of triangle I am talking about is equilateral. The angles of a triangle add up to one hundred and eighty degrees. It is one of the geometric shapes. All triangles are two dimensional. It is studied in geometry. Geometry is the study of property and relationships of points, lines, angles surfaces and solids. Some important facts about triangles, they have three sides. They have three points, corners or angles. All three sides connect and are straight. A triangle is a rigid strong shape because of its stability. The triangles make up the truss design. They are in an assembly of triangles made from a series of straight bars. The triangle is used because of its strength and stability. The truss is also identified by the shapes of the triangle in its design. The extremely strong triangle is the only geometric form that can not be bent out of shape. From as far back as ancient times the triangle has been held in high esteem. For the Egyptian, they were very sacred in the form of the pyramids. The pyramid has four triangles as sides and a square base. A modern extension of the triangle and the pyramid is the geodesic dome which combines triangles and pyramids. To get ready for this lesson I will read The Shape of Things.
The first strategy is knowledge. The students will recognize a triangle and distinguish it from other shapes. This will be through identifying it among other shapes. While drawing some of the pictures, they will be able to use the triangle. The comprehension will take place when comparing them to other shapes while doing a puzzle and completing a truss making exercise. The truss bridge will help with comprehending what this shape looks like. Application will be when the Popsicle triangles will be made. The students will be using triangles to make this type of bridge. The analysis will come when the distinguishing of the shape will be done. This will also be evident through when they do the actual making of the triangles. The triangle has equal sides and that has to be understood. One of the characteristics that make it so unique is the equal sides. They will create designs using triangles. They will label their shape. How the student will be using evaluation of the knowledge of a triangle is through choosing the correct form to make triangles. To further explore the strength of a triangle you must remember that two dimensional shapes are flat. I would hope to build a tetrahedron. A regular tetrahedron is a three dimensional form created by four equilateral triangles with all edges connected. It is just a four sided triangle. Each will build one and take it home. Also a learning center will be set up to let the students' build three dimensional objects from flat shapes.
Tangram/ Technology
The tangram is a puzzle that dates back to the early 1800s. This game in China was considered to be a game for women and children. It comes from the Song Dynasty. According to Chinese history it was part of their furniture. Originally it had six triangular tables and later added rectangular one. After the Ming Dynasty the objects used became wooden blocks. The legend is said that a servant of the emperor was carrying a very expensive tile and tripped and shattered the tile. The servant panicked and tried to put it back together in a square. Instead he created thousands of pictures and patterns as he tried. Tangram is an English word meaning puzzle or trinket. The word was first used by Thomas Hill a former president of Harvard in his book "Geometrical Puzzle for the Youth" in 1848. Tangrams were popular in the 19th century. Some tangrams were made with ivory or jade. The puzzle is composed of five right angle triangles, a square, and a parallelogram. (The parallelogram is unique because any way you turn the puzzles image can not be done through rotation but only through flipping over.)The seven shapes are called tans. They fit together to form a new shape. The shapes make interesting designs. The geometrical design provides mathematical relationships and forms. The tangram is important to this unit for three major reasons with the emphasis on the use of triangles. The tangram designing emphasis of objects and the way in which they will be used in throughout the unit will bring the technological use into focus. The tangram and technology is a combination of both the third and fourth T. The game that I will be using in this unit is called Sagwa. It is Chinese oriented and it is a piece of soft ware that is interactive software can be accessed at http://pbskids.org/sagwa/games/tangrams/index.html the students will learn the basics about how to use a computer.
This game designs objects and is self correcting. It is based on the story about the Chinese Cat .The game is from CineGroupe Sagwa Inc. The objects of the game are a cat or a storyteller and others. When the puzzle is completed there is praise. A hint button can be pushed to help with completing the puzzle. There are two levels for different levels of student's abilities. How I plan to apply the strategies in blooms taxonomy is knowledge. The students before going onto the game will cut out their individual pieces and make there own tangram puzzle. They will do this activity and have enough time to manipulate and become familiar with making images with the puzzle. They will recognize the shapes and use them for designing. A student's comprehension will be tested when the Grandfather Tang's story is read. The students will answer questions concerning the story and how the tangram was used to tell the story. Application will be through manipulating the tangram into some of the things that are in the story. Analysis will take place when they choose puzzle pieces to create designs. They will contrast and fit different triangle shapes together. The synthesis will be through discussion of the history of tangrams the story and how the puzzles are used. Their designing of the objects will show their level of understanding how to use tangrams. Evaluation will be through the successful use of the software. Technology in the classroom helps keep the students up with the current sciences that are happening around the world. In this unit the technology will be used as a tool to support the task of designing and making decisions. In part, the unit the teacher's role turns to being a facilitator and providing guidance as needed. The whole game offers a process of learning through experimentation.
Bridge Time Line
The first book on bridge design was written in 1716 by Hubert Gautier. This is an account of how bridges evolved and arrived. The first bridge was made by a single log or by a wooden plank. The early bridges could not carry heavy weight. In China, one of the first low arch bridges in the world is the Zhoa Xian built in 610. Some arch bridges date back to the second century. A suspension bridge can be a simple rope type structure. The Inca used this type of bridge. The Menai Straits Bridge was built in1826. This suspension bridge was made of cables and iron chains. Akashi Kaikyo Bridge is the longest suspension bridge that was recently built in 1998. It connects the two islands of the Shikoku and the Honshu in Japan. In 1883 the Brooklyn Bridge was completed. It is the first suspension bridge with steel cables in the United States. The world's first steel bridge was completed in Scotland in 1890. It was called the Forth Rail Bridge. The industrial revolution brought along the wrought iron truss design. There are six types of bridges beam, cantilever, arch, suspension, cable stayed and truss. A fine example of a cable stayed bridge is the Pont de Normandie. The Fourth Bridge in Scotland is a cantilever bridge. The Astoria Bridge in Oregon is a truss bridge. Beam bridges are the typical bridges that we see on many highways. Pictures of these bridges will be available. These pictures will assist with the drawing portion of the portfolio.
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