Designing Scale Model Houses

The project that I decided to use with this Gr 4/5 class is one that was developed a few years ago with some colleagues at a previous school I worked in. It has been tweaked over the years so as to be suited directly to the children doing it.

I know there may be doubters about this approach as they may feel that other curriculum areas are being neglected. However, when done with clear purpose and intent in mind, a wealth of skills in literacy and numeracy are utilised, mostly being covered at the point of need which means they are embedded more easily.

More importantly, we are developing skills that can then be used in future work. The skills are not limited purely to this current project. The skills are social as well as academic.

We call it 'The Block', as it is based on the TV show of the same name.

Why 'The Block'?

A lot of the work I do on finding 'hooks' to engage the children is based on what interests them at any given time, and the popularity of this show extends into the classroom, so why not use something that has appeal to the children as well as myself.

To start off with, we watched a short imovie that I made that more or less explained the project in less than 3 minutes. This in itself is one of the hooks I use to get the children involved from the start, as they are encouraged to create a movie themselves of their work as they complete various stages.

I find this to be a fantastic way to encourage mixed ability learning as it enables each child to create a visual record of their work, and everyone has the opportunity to showcase whatever skills they have in doing so. When we only let the high achievers attempt certain tasks towards the end of a project, we are depriving other children access to the full curriculum.

1. We looked at various house plans to understand how things are drawn on them. They were able to add whatever they liked, as long as there were at least 2 bedrooms, a kitchen/living area, a bathroom and laundry.

They used a scale of 1cm =1m

To discover the need for scale, I asked them all to look online for a bed measurement, and then make it out of newspaper. As expected, we ran out of room with 20 children all trying to spread out 'beds' that were about 2m x 140cm in size, so the discussion about needing to make things smaller actually came from them rather than me.

It was interesting seeing them decide what dimensions to use for various rooms. When one child had a toilet that was 5m x 3m, I got them to actually measure it out with a tape measure. This really showed the need to enable children to see things in real perspective, rather than just numbers on paper. We measured the dimensions of the classroom and used this as a reference point for other rooms, something that really helped.

2. Now came the time for construction, where we doubled our scale so that it was easier to cut the cardboard ( something that I let them discover for themselves)

3. After the outside walls went up, in went the interior walls. It was at this point that they could really begin to see what they were creating. We also started with roof designs. Most opted for a flat roof, but as soon as one child experimented with a pitched roof, the designs began to change dramatically!! So much measuring, planning, trial and error!!

4. They are all various stages of construction as we head into our final session this week. Many have started to add yards, brickwork, panels etc and are hoping to construct furniture for various rooms.

Our final task is to 'furnish' a number of rooms. For this activity, they will be given a budget (eg $8 000.00) to plan what they will put in their living area. (TV, lounge suite, dining table etc) They will be given a budget for their own bedroom and the kitchen as well.

Finally, we are hoping to have a mini expo this week where other classes will come to the room and hear the children speak about the features of their homes.

All in all, a very successful project that gave us so much information about what the children can do, and how they see themselves as learners.