Feature: A Team Approach to Special Needs
Posted on December 5th, 2010 by ASEE
Physics teacher Ed Linz learned the value of teamwork commanding a submarine, where crew members place their lives in each others’ hands. He now collaborates with a special education instructor in teaching a mixed class of high school students.
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Tags: Physical Science, Physics, Science Teachers, STEM education, Teachers, Team Teaching, Team-building skills, U.S. Navy
In this Techbridge lesson, students in grades 5-12 collaborate to solve a fun engineering challenge: to create a device capable of transferring a set of “radioactive” golf balls from one bag to another – with no human contact. Which team can complete the task in the shortest amount of time possible?
Practicing elementary civil engineering, students in grades 1 through 8 build a portable paper structure able to support the weight of a book. They learn that material strength varies with shape and arrangement.
Using spaghetti and marshmallows, students in grades 5 – 7 experiment with different structures to determine which ones can handle the greatest amount of load. Their experiments help them understand compression and tension forces in relation to the strength of structures. 
