Housing Blueprints

     I am fortunate enough to have blueprints of all the phases of building a house. (My husband's occupation.) I had these laminated and I post them around the room. The day that the kids walk in they are so excited and just want to spend a day looking at everything that is on them. There is measurement, scale, proportion, slope, area, volume, and the list goes on. I have 15 different blueprints in total and I just don't have the time to drag them home and make problems over all of the various units. This is the last week before spring break so I have decided to use the blueprints as students exploration lessons for my Pre Algebra students.
     The students will be in groups of 4 and given a sheet to create 2  math problems related to the blueprints. I will have rulers, protractors and dry erase markers available at each station. We will have a short discussion of all the possible topics for their questions.  The students will be able to make questions that are based on their abilities and I will steer them to the levels I think are appropriate for them. I may even assign different topics per group. One group may measure the perimeter of the driveways where others will have to create a problem to find how much asphalt will be needed to construct the driveway. Some may find the slope of the roofs and others may find how many shingles will be needed to cover the roof. I am excited about this because the kids will create the questions for me and then I will have a bank of questions to use for future lessons. YES!!!
     Check back tomorrow and I will post some pictures of the blueprints and my classroom. I will post some of the problems the kids create in next weeks post. I am excited and I know they are going to love this lesson. I wish I could make a copy of the blueprints but they are so big. If there are builders in your area maybe they will donate old blueprints to your school. Let me know, I would love to see how you apply these in your classes.

                                                     Til next time,
                                                          Jan