Architects in Cubeland

Est. Class Sessions: 1–2

Developing the Lesson

Review Rules for Building Plans. Divide the class into teams of two students and have them pretend they are members of architectural teams in Cubeland.

Instruct teams to design and construct a building. Display the Rules for Building Plans Master from Lesson 2 as you review these building restrictions:

Cubes must always be properly connected.
No balconies or arches allowed.

Show the three sample buildings that don't follow the rules you prepared in Lesson 2. Then ask students to recall why these rules are needed for building plans to make sense.

You cannot tell from looking down if there are arches.
It's hard to tell how many columns there are when cubes are not attached to one another.

Make Buildings and Plans. Tell student pairs to use 30 connecting cubes, and to use all of their cubes in their buildings. See Meeting Individual Needs for assignment modifications.

Modifications can be made for the Architects in Cubeland assignment.

For students who are struggling:

limit the number of cubes in their buildings.

For students who are ready for a challenge:

set contraints for the building. For example, ask them to use all of their cubes but limit the height to 5 cubes or 10 cubes.

Student teams will make building plans of their buildings on the Building Plan section of the Architects in Cubeland pages.

Students will write a memo describing their new building in the Memo section of the Architects in Cubeland pages.

Explain that a memo is a written message that people in offices use to tell one another important information. Familiarize students with the parts of the memo by displaying the Memo in the Student Activity Book. Explain to students that in order to describe their buildings, they will need to measure its three dimensions—height, length, and width:

how tall the building is,
how long the building is from front to back, and
how long the building is from left to right.

Dimensions. A dimension is a distance in one direction. The buildings in this unit are three-dimensional shapes. Students can measure the height, width, and depth of each building. However, there are no hard and fast rules about what each dimension of a three-dimensional shape should be called. In fact, sometimes the dimensions are referred to as height, width, and length. Where you are when you look at a building often determines what you call each of the three dimensions. To avoid confusion, we label the building plans with front, back, left, and right. Then we can ask students for the distance from front to back and the distance from left to right without using the terms width or depth. The height of the building is the height of the tallest column as shown on the building plan. You will likely use the terms width or length (and possibly depth) in conversations with your students as you discuss the buildings. Be flexible in the use of these terms with these definitions in mind.

Remind students that these three lengths should be labeled with units. The building's volume should be labeled with cubic units. Tell students that they will be exchanging their building plans and memos with another team later in the lesson. They need to make sure that their work is carefully measured and recorded so that another student can recreate their building. Instruct students to begin building.

Build and Evaluate with Student-to-Student Checklist. After student teams have created their buildings, plans, and memos, display and direct their attention to the Architects in Cubeland Student-to-Student Checklist page in the Student Activity Book. Tell students that after they exchange their memo and building plan with another team and use them to build the building, they will use the checklist to assess the other team's work. They will focus on MPE5, Show my work, and MPE6, Use labels.

Ask:

How can you tell if a team did a good job showing their work on the building plan and the memo? (Possible responses: The building plan should be clear so that we can understand how to recreate the building. The measurements on the memo should match with the measurements of the cube building.)
What units need to be used on the Cubeland Memo? What unit do you use to measure the height, length, and width of the buildings? (units)
What unit do you use to measure the volume of the building? (cubic units)
What if no units are listed on the memo? (We might not know what the numbers mean.)

Ask student teams to exchange their plans and memos with another team. Students then construct a building using the new plan and memo. They then use the checklist to evaluate their peers' work.

Use the Architects in Cubeland pages with the Feedback Box from the Student Activity Book to assess students' abilities to make connections between a building of cubes, the building plan, and number sentences [E4]; measure the length of the dimensions of a building [E7]; count and add cubic units to find volume [E8]; construct a building plan given the volume [E9]; show work [MPE5]; and use labels [MPE6].

To provide targeted practice for these Expectations, place copies of the Building Plan section of the Architects in Cubeland pages from the Student Activity Book in a learning center with connecting cubes. For each page, ask students to construct a building and then create a building plan. Other students will use the plan to reconstruct the building, and write a number sentence to describe the volume of the building.

Compare Buildings. After teams have finished making buildings from each other's plans and memos, they should compare the building made by the original team to the newly constructed building. Guide students to analyze how the two buildings are alike or different.

For example, suggest that they ask the following questions: