My fourth grade students recently completed an exploration of area and perimeter. To extend their understanding of those concepts, my student teachers and I designed a project in which they would need to draw a blueprint of the main floor of a house that was to have a square footage between 1000-1500, two bedrooms with one at least 120 square feet, assign a scale value for measuring purposes, and label each room with the respective area and perimeter.
Students then constructed scale models of their home. We have various forms of construction media ranging from marshmallows, legos, and simple cardboard. The students exceeded expectations with this project! Below are some pictures of the models as well as some blueprint examples. Enjoy!
The following Common Core Mathematical Practices were met in this assignment:
1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively
4. Model with mathematics
5. Use appropriate tools strategically
6. Attend to precision