Construction Materials, Grade 11: STEM Road Map for High School

What if you could challenge your 11th graders to gain an understanding of the feats of engineering required to build high-rise buildings and maybe even improve them? With this volume in the STEM Road Map Curriculum Series, you can!

Construction Materials outlines a journey that will steer your students toward authentic problem solving while grounding them in integrated STEM disciplines. The series is designed to meet the growing need to infuse real-world learning into K 12 classrooms.

This book is an interdisciplinary module that uses project- and problem-based learning. It gives students an inside look at the complex technologies and science behind the buildings they may take for granted. They ll examine micro- and macro-properties of construction materials, particularly those of high-rise buildings, through a unit divided into three sections that explore the following:

1. How high-rises are constructed, their influence on society, and how to communicate complex ideas clearly
2. The factors involved in the collapse of the World Trade Center s twin towers in New York, with a focus on how engineers use structural failures to learn more about the designed world
3. Construction innovations that will prompt your students to propose new ways to construct high-rises

The STEM Road Map Curriculum Series is anchored in the Next Generation Science Standards, the Common Core State Standards, and the Framework for 21st Century Learning. In-depth and flexible, Construction Materials can be used as a whole unit or in part to meet the needs of districts, schools, and teachers who are charting a course toward an integrated STEM approach.