Begin the lesson by reading the books
How a House is Built by Gail Gibbons and
Building a House by Byron Barton as a "hook" to interest students in the project. As you read the stories, point out the variety of buildings in the text and discuss their purposes.
After reading, you can review the pages of the books to give students an opportunity to identify different geometric shapes used in the buildings. (In the main part of the lesson, students will be sorting and identifying geometric shapes, and this can serve as a good warm‑up.)
You can also invite a guest architect to talk about his job and how mathematics is related to his work. Students can see how the architect uses various measuring tools when drawing blueprints.
The first major activity of the lesson is sorting plane and solid figures. Provide students with an assortment of two‑ and three‑dimensional objects as well as a copy of the Sort ‘Em activity sheet.
Upon completion, review the Sort ‘Em activity sheet with students. [All items in the top row of the word bank, from Square to Octagon, are plane figures; all items in the bottom row, from Cube to Pyramid, are solid figures.] During this review, be sure to elicit from students what distinguishes a plane figure from a solid figure. [Plane figures "lie flat," whereas solid figures take up space.]
Following the sorting activity, students should attempt to find all the geometric shapes in the architectural drawings on the Shape Search activity sheet. Students should recognize that a variety of shapes are used in architecture, but more importantly, they should learn the names and attributes of plane and solid figures.
To conclude the lesson, connect these activities with the math that students will be learning in the rest of the unit. Introduce how they will become junior architects who will design their dream clubhouse. Have students, in small teams of two or three, decide on a theme for their clubhouse and to make a list of all the items they believe are essential to include. Some of the themes the students select may be Sports, Animal Lovers, Art, or Dance. The students’ task for the next three lessons will be to learn the mathematical skills required for designing an architectural structure and then to build their own clubhouses.
