Our partner architect visited the class for the first time yesterday; what an exciting visit! As MF exclaimed… “a real girl builder!”
She had so many great ideas to share with our students and we all (adults included) learned a lot. As non-architects it’s a big leap for us, as educators, to help the children through this inquiry and her visit gave us a much-needed shot of confidence.
She had a great strategy for teaching perspective drawing. She brought in two green peppers and used them as a substitute for a building because, as she pointed out, peppers have walls and interior space.
She showed us how to draw the pepper from the front (architecture term, elevation), from the top (plan), and with the front wall cut away (section). The children were captivated by the idea that there was more than one way to draw an object. They asked great questions and had amazing ideas about what kinds of buildings architects design (prisons, hospitals, shopping malls).
KC shared that it was important to make a diagram of your building and we talked about how we might measure our drawings so that a builder could follow them accurately. Our architect then showed us how to measure our model buildings so that we could translate them into drawings too.
She showed us how we could draw our buildings from elevation, plan, and section perspectives – this was especially interesting because it got the children thinking about shape; a triangular building looks rectangular when you view it from the top.
After all that learning we got the chance to do our own drawings! The children amazed us by applying their new learning so immediately and by using rulers, for the first time, with confidence and precision.