First, students will observe their homes from the outside and draw four sides of their houses. Next, they will create a 3-D replica at school. Your class will love having a mini village of their own homes! Finally, the students will compare/contrast their homes and create several graphs.
The student will be able to compare/contrast his/her house with other types of houses in the community.
Paper, markers or crayons
If you do not have a software program that creates 3-D houses, you will need to have drawing supplies.
Community Construction KitI highly recommend using this software to create your 3-D houses. It is user friendly for second graders, and it is easy to print and assemble houses. It is made by Tom Snyder.
Spreadsheet program such as AppleWorks.
The students will create several graphs from the data they put into their spreadsheets. All spreadsheets to use for the graphs may be downloaded in this lesson.
Please answer the questions about your home.
Students should draw and color the four main sides of their houses and roofs. Be sure to include windows, doors, bricks, stone, siding, stucco, etc.
If you have a software program such as Community Construcion Kit, use your drawings as a guide to create a 3-D replica of your house on the computer. Print, color, and assemble your house. Markers work better than most crayons.
Count the number of windows on your house.
Count the number of doors on the outside of your house.
Is your house a 1 story?
Is your house a 2 story?
Is your house more than 2 stories?
Is your house made MOSTLY out of:
brick
siding
stone
stucco
other?
Do you have a basement?
Using the data you collected in the individual work, create a graph that shows the data of your small group.
Using the data the small groups collected, create a graph showing the results from the whole class.
Now compare/contrast your results with another class.
Duration
Homework- Allow 3-4 days for the students to draw the four sides of their houses at home and bring their drawings to school. Creating a 3-D house- If you are using the software program Community Construction Kit by Tom Snyder, allow 20 minutes per student to create and print their houses. Coloring and assembling houses took another 20 minutes at the most. Individual questions- 10 minutes Small group work- 15 minutes Whole class work- 15 minutes
I reworked the spreadsheets several times before and after my students finished this lesson. Feel free to add or delete columns to meet your class needs.
We compared data with a 2nd grade class in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. But it may be interesting to compare data with another class or even another grade level.
The students had difficulty counting windows- they wanted to count each window pane as a separate window. Also, they often forgot to closely examine their roof- they knew the color, but had a hard time drawing the shape of the shingle. You may want to go over these topics before graphing the data.
Homework for Monday, April 17, 2000 Please observe the outside of your house! ___Draw and color the front of your house. ___Draw and color the sides of your house. ___Draw and color the back of your house. Be sure to include: ___ outside doors ___ windows ___brick, siding, or stones ___ color of wood, brick, and roof ___ Do you have a chimney? ___ garage doors ___ lights Why? We will be creating 3-D houses on our computer at school to add to our community map. Please bring your drawings to school on Thursday, April 20, 2000 or as soon as you finish your drawings.
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