Table of Contents
- Content Home
- 3 Foot, 6 Foot, 9 Foot
- Anti Gravity
- Drawbridge
- First Impressions
- Group Jump Rope
- Magic Maze
- Moving Marbles
- Perfect Square
- Speed
- Spider's Web
- Structure
Overview- Props & Setup
- Instructions
- Safety
- Variations
- Reflections
- Sample Story
- Academic Extension
- Social Extensions
- Grab it and Go
- Virtual Group Juggle
- Winding Down
Math Content Standard
Students
will be having a good time designing and creating their towering
structures, but how disappointing will it be to take them down?
Well, there's a way to memorialize their skyscrapers and throw in a
bit of math by drawing a scale model of their structure.
The first step will require that they measure the height of their structure. Have them use centimeters rather than inches to get them used to the metric system. (Hint: There are 100 cm in every meter.) If all you have available is a non-metric ruler, inches will be fine. (Each foot is equal to 12 inches But don't use feet -- that will introduce too much conversion at this point.)
Next, they will have to figure out how to scale it down for their paper. Tell them that they will need to make the drawing be 1/10 the size of their structure. What does that mean? Get them to talk about this first. Notice how the number 10 is on the bottom, which implies division. How will they do the math? There are a couple of ways to think about this:
- Divide the height of their structure by 10. We get this idea from the fraction 1/10, which shows 1 being divided by 10. So, if the height was 352 cm, then the scale drawing will be 35.2 cm tall.
- Another way to think of it is to multiply it by 0.10, which is just the decimal way of showing 1/10. They will get the same answer.
If their paper isn't big enough, give them some more! Or, have them scale their drawing even further -- perhaps by 1/20. Now how will they do the math? (Divide by 20 this time, or multiply by the decimal equivalent of 1/20 which is 0.20.)
They can experiment with scale. They could even do scale
drawings of themselves and their friends!
Standards
This activity supports: California Academic Content Standards - Mathematics - Five - Number Sense. Sub-strand 1.0: Students compute with very large and very small numbers, positive integers, decimals, and fractions and understand the relationship between decimals, fractions, and percents. They understand the relative magnitudes of numbers. Sub-strand 2.0: Students perform calculations and solve problems involving addition, subtraction, and simple multiplication and division of fractions and decimals: