The goal of this project was to get students to understand that buildings shape our environment, while focusing on reading skills and the world's continents.
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Objective:
Students learn what architects do and think about.
Activity:
- Slide showing what architects do, with whom they work, and what they
think about when they make buildings. Slides are of the inside of an
architect's office, buildings under construction, and unusual buildings.
- Each student gets shapes to arrange to create a building. Using
crayons and a thin piece of paper over the arranged shapes, students make
rubbings of their buildings.
Materials:
- construction paper shapes
- white paper
- crayons
Homework:
The students' assignment is to take the rubbing of their building and add
detail to it, i.e. windows, doors, and roof shingles.
- Walking Tour
Objective:
Students learn about the architecture in their immediate environment.
Activity:
- Materials grab bag. The architect brings a variety of building
material samples, and the students sit on the floor in a circle. The
architect blind-folds the students two at a time and hands them a material
sample to feel. She asks the students to guess what the material is, what
it feels like, and where it might be used.
- Texture rubbings. The students with paper and crayons walk around
their school in search of different textures. They do this inside and
outside the school building on the floors, stairs, and walls.
Materials:
- architectural materials samples
- paper
- crayons
Homework:
Students' assignment is to find textures in their home and create rubbings
to show the class. They are to label each rubbing and describe the
textures.
- School and Neighborhood Discovery
Objective:
Students find textures, patterns and shapes in the school building and
neighborhood.
Activity:
- Walking tour/scavenger hunt of the school and neighborhood. The
class looks for specific shapes, materials and building elements.
- The teacher begins to read the story From the Mixed Up Files of
Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by EL Konigsburg for the final project. She
asks the students to pay special attention to the location where the story
takes place and to think about what the place might look and feel like.
Materials:
- scavenger hunt hand out
- book to read the class
Homework:
The assignment for students is to find shapes in their home (squares,
triangles, rectangles, circles) and to draw the objects and label them.
- Structure
Objective:
Students learn how buildings stand up.
Activity:
- Use the AIE structure poster to describe structural concepts.
- Use slides that match the illustration on the poster.
- Students act out the structures with their bodies, demonstating the
concepts (arch, spaceframe, etc.).
- Students build small structures out of toothpicks and marshmallows
(if you leave the marshmallows out for about 10 hours they get stale,
which works better for model building and helps keep the kids from eating
too many.) Each student gets a baggy with 20 toothpicks and 20
marshmallows with which to build. After looking at the truss and
spaceframe structures the students use the toothpicks and marshmallows to
replicate their own version of a triangulated structure.
Vocabulary:
- truss
- spaceframe
- structure
Materials:
- structure poster
- structure slide from kit
- structure kit
- tooth picks and marshmallows
Homework:
The students' assignment is to bring in a picture of a bulding from a
book, magazine, or newspaper.
- Buildings around the World
Objective:
Students learn about architecture in different continents, cultures and
climates.
Activity:
- Slide show and discussion about buildings around the world in
various cultures and climates. Students guess where the building in each
slide is located.
- Share personal experience of living in a tipi.
- Newspaper log structures. The students form groups of four and roll
their own paper logs. They then have 15 minutes to build a structure that
a person could fit inside with the paper logs and tape. Careful
contruction of the logs is important to create a stable structure.
Materials:
- slides of buildings from around the world
- newspaper and tape
- Architecture in Stories
Objective:
Students take a close look at the story the class is reading, From the
Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil Frankweiler, and create a drawing that
illustrates part of the story.
Activity:
- Review previous classes. Students recap what they have learned.
- Magazine advertisements illustrate how architecture is often used to
create a setting.
- A few children's books illustrate how imagination can be used to
create a story setting.
- Students discuss how the architectural setting affects the story
they are reading.
- Students name some of the settings in their story.
- Students draw one setting from the story, making sure to show things
such as walls, doors, windows, floors, and ceilings and to think about
colors and textures.
- Introduce the final project. Students will work with a teammate and
build a model of a selected scene from the story.
Materials:
- magazines showing architectural backdrops
- children's books with architectural settings
- Building a Scene from a Story (also Week
#8)
Objective:
Students develop a three-dimensional view of a scene from the story they
read.
Activity:
- Students build models.
- Students think about structure, texture, and pattern as they build
their models.
Materials:
- boxes, cardboard, tubes, scrap fabric, popsicle sticks, thin wire,
wood scraps
