Description
What our Scale Drawings lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Scale Drawings applies knowledge of ratios and proportions to drawing and/or designing to scale. This lesson also introduces how to identify the actual sizes of things using scale as a guide. At the end of the lesson, students will be able to use ratios and proportions to draw and/or design to scale, and identify the actual sizes of things using scale as a guide. This lesson is for students in 5th grade and 6th grade.
Classroom Procedure
Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the blue box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand. The supplies you will need for this lesson include rulers, drawing or graph paper, and the handouts.
Options for Lesson
Included with this lesson is an “Options for Lesson” section that lists a number of suggestions for activities to add to the lesson or substitutions for the ones already in the lesson. One optional addition to the lesson activity is to have your students vote on the best designed home or give their sales pitch for their home to the entire class. For an additional activity, you could have your students design an entire town, an amusement park, or other place or building. You could also have your students create 3D scale models of historical places or monuments. Another idea is to invite an architect, artist, or sculptor to speak to your class about scale drawings. To add to the homework assignment, you could have your students create a 2D or 3D scale drawing/model of their home or bedroom. Finally, for additional practice, you can have your students create a 2D or 3D model of the classroom or school.
Teacher Notes
The teacher notes page includes a paragraph with additional guidelines and things to think about as you begin to plan your lesson. This page also includes lines that you can use to add your own notes as you’re preparing for this lesson.
SCALE DRAWINGS LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
Fractions, Ratios, and Proportions
The Scale Drawings lesson plan includes two content pages. The person who designed your school or home first had to make a drawing of it, including each room, the roof, doors, and everything else for the construction company to build. They used a scale drawing (an enlarged or a reduced drawing that is similar to an actual object) to determine the size of the building. To build the school or house, the builder used a reduced drawing.
To understand scale drawings, you first need to review some information about fractions, ratios, and proportions. Remember that fractions are parts of a whole. Ratios compare two quantities and can be written like fractions.
Let’s look at an example. There are 4 boys in the room for every 5 girls. You can write this as a fraction: 4/5. The ratio of boys to the total is 4/9, and girls to the total is 5/9. How many girls would there be if the total number of people was 18? The answer is 10, which means the ratio would be 10/18. Two equal ratios make up a proportion.
To identify and create scale drawings, you need to understand fractions, ratios, and proportions!
Scale Drawings
Scale drawings are reduced or enlarged drawings of an object. In your science class, you look at enlarged scale drawings of cells, atoms, and other tiny objects, because it would be impossible to see and understand a real cell drawn to its actual size. On the other hand, things like planets, animals, plants, mountains, and other large objects are drawn on a reduced scale, because they’re too big for your textbook!
A scale is a ratio that compares a length, or other size, in a drawing to the corresponding length, or size, in the actual object. For example, maps include a scale to show the actual distance between places. A road that’s 20 miles long in real life might be one inch long on a map. You can write scales in three different ways. To show the scale of the map, you could write 1 inch: 20 miles, 1 inch/20 miles, or 1 inch = 20 miles.
Scale Drawing Example: The Washington Monument
You need to use ratios to create scale drawings, which you can then use to find proportions. Let’s look at another example. The Washington Monument is 555 feet tall. You can build a scale model of the monument using this ratio: 1 inch = 50 feet. Since 1 inch equals 50 feet, you need to find how many inches equal 555 feet by solving a proportion: 1 inch/50 feet = x/555 feet. To solve for x, cross multiply 1 x 555 and then divide by 50: 555 ÷ 50 = 11.1. Therefore, x = 11.1 inches. An accurate scale model of the Washington Monument model would be 11.1 inches tall.
Accurate scale models and drawings can help you compare the sizes of buildings or other objects or the distance from place to place on a map. Whoever is drawing or designing the reduced or enlarged model or object must decide on the ratio they want to use.
To create the scale model of the Washington Monument, you could have used another scale. Instead of 1 inch equaling 50 feet, you could have used 2 inches. Using that scale, the model of the Washington Monument would be 5.55 inches tall.
Blueprints are plans or models of a design or other technical drawing. Almost every home is designed using a blueprint, and the builders then use the scale drawing to build the actual house. The lesson shows an example drawing of a blueprint of four rooms in a house with a scale of 1 inch = 2 feet. The first room shows a length of 8 inches and a width of 4 inches. Using the ratio (1 inch = 2 feet), you can figure out that the real length of the room is 16 feet and the real width is 8 feet.
Other Uses for Scale Drawings
Scale drawings aren’t only used for building homes and schools. Some toy cars, boats, airplanes or trains are scale models of the real objects. The dimensions of the model are proportional to the length, width, and height of the real thing, which helps the models look realistic!
Architects, builders, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and artists such as painters and sculptors may use scale drawings or models to help guide them in their work. Someone who designs bridges may first do so on a small scale, using proportional dimensions for the real bridge. The real bridge may be a mile long and hundreds of feet tall, but the model may only be a few feet long and several inches tall.
To summarize, scale drawings are reduced or enlarged drawings or models of persons, places, or things. To create a scale drawing, you need to understand fractions, ratios, and proportions. Proportion are made up of two ratios, which are equivalent fractions. You can use scale drawings to help you compare the relative sizes of things.
SCALE DRAWINGS LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Scale Drawings lesson plan includes three worksheets: an activity worksheet, a practice worksheet, and a homework assignment. You can refer to the guide on the classroom procedure page to determine when to hand out each worksheet.
FLOOR PLAN ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
Students will work with a partner to complete the activity worksheet. Each pair will design a one-floor home including a living room, kitchen, two bathrooms, and two bedrooms, along with three additional rooms of any type, a two-car garage, and a front or back deck. They must make sure to include doors and doorways between rooms. Each pair will sketch their floor plan, decide on a scale, and then draw a final blueprint on drawing paper. Once complete, they will meet with another pair of students and convince them to “purchase” the home they designed.
PROPORTION PRACTICE WORKSHEET
For the practice worksheet, students will first complete several proportions. Next, they will solve five word problems that relate to proportions and scale drawings. Finally, they will use a ruler to estimate the distances between states on a map of the United States printed on the worksheet.
SCALE DRAWINGS HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
The homework assignment asks students to answer five problems related to the lesson material. They will then match lesson terms to their definitions. Finally, they will sketch an accurate scale drawing of two connecting rooms in their home, including the scale.
Worksheet Answer Keys
This lesson plan includes answer keys for the practice worksheet and the homework assignment. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.
