Architecture Activity
Students will design and build a 3-D model of Native American dwellings, and find the surface area and volume of its structures aligned to common cores standards for middle school math. Students will need rulers, large pieces of paper, pencils, tape, glue, markers, cardboard or thick paper and sticks.
Show students examples of teepees, pueblos, and hogans both as structures of the past and present. Students will note characteristics of the dwellings, and identify the 3-D shapes they see, which are cones, rectangular prisms, and hexagonal prism.
Use cooperative learning strategy by pairing students or in groups of three. Students will work together to generate ideas for their structures and plan their community. In learning about the importance of community among the Native American tribes, students will design their community to show the important aspects in building a tribal community. Distribute large sheets of paper and ask students to draw basic blueprints for their cities, using rulers and compasses to create the shapes of the floors of their buildings. Students will need to label the area for the structure, and measure the dimensions of the floor of each building or designated area (remind students pueblos will need a large area). Using the planned dimensions given for the floor of each structure, students will create their dwellings out of paper to place in their community. You may want to demonstrate the basic method for measuring and drawing out pieces to tape together to make cubes, rectangular prisms, and hexagonal structures. Students can either decide on a height for their buildings before creating them, or create the buildings and measure them for height afterward. For visual examples the resources that would be optimal for this activity is using the pinterest website and online three dimensional nets for the shapes. Also, for modification, guide students who need assistance by providing blueprints and by helping them create their structures from copies of sheets with the pieces for the dwellings already drawn on them.
Once structures are drawn and created on paper, students can begin writing down and measuring the dimensions (height, length, width, radius, circumference) of each one. It’s easier to create a basic chart using these headings and students can begin filling in the chart.
Once students have measured their buildings and filled the dimensions in on the chart, they can begin finding the surface area of each building. Briefly remind students of the formula to find surface area:
- Surface area of a cube: A= 6 l2
- Surface area of a rectangular prism: A= 2(l∙w) + 2(w∙h) + 2(l∙h)
Once students have completed their charts, they can begin decorating their structures with paint or markers.
Assessment: Collect students’ charts and assess the accuracy of their calculations based on the buildings’ measurements.
I will offer students the opportunity to write and solve real-world word problems using the measurements of their structures, or encourage students to create a scale and calculate real-life dimensions of structures according to the information they learned during the lesson.
Integration of the final phase. In this phase, students do not learn any new material. Instead they review and summarize the work done in this unit through activities such as the following:
Relevant Project Idea
- Create a Native American community using three-dimensional shapes as the dwellings and have students use their shapes as models in finding measurement (surface area)
- Write an essay of what they learned in bridging heritage and math
- Show and tell - students will bring artifacts of their heritage or artifacts of the geometry concept they learned.
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