In this Introduction for Teachers:
Before you begin | Learning the Language | Structure is only part of a building | How to use these teaching materials | How to tell if your students are "getting it" | The "Basic Basics": The Vocabulary of Structural Principles | Structure is intertwined with other factors | You're surrounded

How to tell if your students are "getting it"

Even as they watch the slides for the first time, your students should begin to notice that almost every one shows examples of more than one of the terms. Before you're half-way through, they will probably begin commenting that a slide selected to describe a beam also shows a column, or that a truss is used with an arch. To help you encourage these observations, we've written a separate list of all of the structural components and systems in each slide. Once the kids are comfortable with the different terms, you can show the slides a second time and make a game out of seeing how many terms apply to each picture.

In a slide of a Gothic cathedral, they might be able to identify foundation, walls, columns, colonnades, arches, arcades, ribbed vaults, buttresses and flying buttresses in one single building.

The second real test of success is when your students begin to recognize that these structural components and systems are all around them all the time. Because many structural systems are hidden by finishing materials, your students will have to develop a bit of X-ray vision to "see" inside the walls around them. Your school neighborhood, wherever it is, is rich with these elements. Get out there with your students and look around. Equip them with clipboards and paper so that they can build on the thumbnail sketches in their workbooks by drawing local structures on site. Buildings that have undergone some decay or are under construction can reveal much about structural principles and building materials.

See if they can recognize the structural properties of objects that aren't buildings. Have them take a new look at the chairs and desks in the classroom. What we call the "legs" of a desk are columns that distribute the dead load of the desk and the live load of the teacher's books and papers to the floor. What's the structural difference between a standard rigid classroom chair and a folding chair? (The first is a compressive structure, a slab supported by columns. The second operates more like a truss; you can see the triangles made when the chair is opened, and how the members all pull and press against each other when someone sits down.) What does the ledge that holds chalk have in common with a balcony? (They're both cantilevers.)

In this Introduction for Teachers:
Before you begin | Learning the Language | Structure is only part of a building | How to use these teaching materials | How to tell if your students are "getting it" | The "Basic Basics": The Vocabulary of Structural Principles | Structure is intertwined with other factors | You're surrounded