“My kids really understand solar and earth-heat energy,” says a second-grade teacher in Saugus, California. “Some of them are building solar collectors for their energy course.” These young scientists are part of City Building Educational Program (CBEP), a particular program for kindergarten through twelfth grade that uses the stages of city planning to teach basic reading, writing and math skills, and more.
The children don’t just plan any city. They map and analyze the housing, energy, and transportation requirements of their own district and predict its needs in 100 years. With the aid of an architect who visits the classroom once a week, they invent new ways to meet these needs and build models of their creations. “Designing buildings of the future gives children a lot of freedom,” says the teacher who developed this program. “They are able to use their own rich imagination and inventions without fear of blame, because there are no wrong answers in a future context. In fact, as the class enters the final model-building stage of the program, an elected “official” and “planning group” makes all the design decisions for the model city, and the teacher steps back and becomes an adviser.”
CBEP is a set of activities, games and imitations that teach the basic steps necessary for problem-solving: observing, analyzing, working out possible answers, and judging them based on the children's own standards.
1. The Program is designed to .
A. direct kids to build solar collectors
B. train young scientists for city planning
C. develop children’s problem-solving abilities
D. train kids to be future architects
2. An architect pays a weekly visit to the classroom to .
A. find out kids’ creative ideas B. discuss with the teacher
C. give children lectures D. help kids with their program
3. Who is the designer of the program?
A. An official. B. An architect. C. A teacher. D. A scientist.
4. The children feel free in the program because they .
A. can design future buildings themselves
B. have new ideas and rich imagination
C. are given enough time to design models
D. need not worry about making mistakes