Dear Educator:

We are pleased to provide you with our new elementary school Educational Video and Classroom Discussion Kit, "Engineering Is For Everyone." You may view the classroom discussion kit online or download it as a PDF file for easy printing.  PDF files require Adobe Acrobat Reader to view or print, which is a free download from Adobe. To order the video, "Engineering Is For Everyone" call 1-800-THE-ASME.

Developed by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers - under the guidance of a panel of experienced classroom teachers - this new program is designed to introduce your students to the basic precepts and exciting ideas of the engineering field - and to do so in a manner that overcomes many youngsters' initial resistance to mathematics and science.

"Engineering Is For Everyone" was created especially with the teacher in mind; one of our primary goals is to make it easy for you to incorporate the program's lessons into your existing 3rd, 4th, 5th or 6th grade curriculum.  The elements in the Discussion Kit include a Teacher's Classroom Guide, providing background information and suggested discussion points; a Classroom Overhead Transparency to assist you with your lessons; three Student Project Copy masters, with activities tailored specifically to the grade level you are teaching.

The entire package is built around a Classroom Videotape, specifically created to help you kick off your lessons in a "user-friendly" way - utilizing the video medium most young students prefer.

The entire program is built around Bloom's Taxonomy, a progressive, step-by-step method of learning in which students are introduced to ideas they are comfortable with.  Next, they see how those ideas form the basis for more complex ideas which, by themselves, might have seemed "scary" to them.  Or, in the words of the young girl who stars in the "Engineering IS For Everyone" video: "Some of the words are long, and kids never use them.  But if you ask what they mean, you find out they're things we already know."

We hope that this program becomes an effective classroom teaching tool for you.  And we ask that you indicate your thoughts and comments about "Engineering Is For Everyone" in an e-mail note to ASME Education so we can continue to provide you with useful classroom materials in the future.