Team Up!
Crestmont Kids Hope Mural. After the 9/11 attack, Crestmont Kids met to discuss their concerns and feelings. Each wrote a letter to a child who was touched by the WTC attack. Then, the group created a mural of "Hope" to share at Comfort Zone Camp where children who lost their loved ones on 9/11 meet as a group.Copyright Image courtesy of Rachel Paulson, children's environmental author, http://www.earthmurals.org and http://www.usakidsauthor.com. Used with permission.
Students explore the physical and psychological effect of stress and tension on human beings. They develop their observing, thinking, writing and teamwork skills by working on a group art project and reporting about it. They learn about the stages of group formation, group dynamics and team member roles that make for effective teams. In the process, they discover how collective action can foster a sense of community support, which can alleviate personal feelings of stress and tension. Note: The literacy activities for the Mechanics unit are based on physical themes that have broad application to our experience in the world — concepts of rhythm, balance, spin, gravity, levity, inertia, momentum, friction, stress and tension.
Engineers often work on teams with people who bring specialized skills and experiences to the problem at hand. Even though working with a variety of people under time constraints can cause stress and tension among team members, it is balanced by the benefits of sharing tasks and the contributions of many talents and points-of-view. Professional engineers are skilled at keeping group dynamics issues constructive and focused towards building a strong, cooperative team that can collaborate to achieve a common goal.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Apply skills in analysis, synthesis, evaluation and explanation to their writing and speaking.
- Make predictions, draw conclusions and analyze what they read, hear and view
- Learn about the stages of group formation, group dynamics, and team member roles that make for effective engineering teams