Summary:
In this lesson, students design, create, record, market and finance a new toy. The go through a vast amount of the curriculum while doing so and have fun developing their product. A lesson that works well with pairs or individuals, it is highly engaging through its hands-on and real-life connections.
Australian Curriculum Links:
- Use efficient mental and written strategies and apply appropriate digital technologies to solve problems(ACMNA291)
- Connect three-dimensional objects with their nets and other two-dimensional representations(ACMMG111)
- Select and apply efficient mental and written strategies and appropriate digital technologies to solve problems involving all four operations with whole numbers (ACMNA123)
- Multiply decimals by whole numbers and perform divisions by non-zero whole numbers where the results are terminating decimals, with and without digital technologies (ACMNA129)
- Investigate and calculate percentage discounts of 10%, 25% and 50% on sale items, with and without digital technologies (ACMNA132)
Lesson:
Introduction:
- Introduce students to the create task of designing a toy. Ask them to think about the jobs that would be involved in creating a toy and marketing it for sale in Australia.
- Explain what to do:
- Students work in pairs.
- Using no more than 40 blocks build a model, eg a dinosaur, truck, helicopter, robot.
- Record what colours you have used and how many.
- Draw it / photograph it.
- Take it apart photographing the step by step stages of building it.
- How much will you charge for your creativity? Decide the cost of one block and use multiplication to calculate. Factor in labour time.
- Create the correct size box that would house your model would fit into. Use a suitable net. You will need to know the volume of your model in the standard unit of cubic centimetres.
Body:
- Set your students to task.
- Rover and assist where needed.
- Pull out focus groups for various parts of the task (where needed)
- Remind students to think about:
- Who will buy it? A boy or girl? What age?
- How will you advertise it? Photos, videos?
- What profit would you expect to make?
Conclusion:
Discuss with your students and ask them to record what they have learnt about:
- Geometric and spatial reasoning.
- 2D images of 3D objects.
- Problem solving and logic.
- Money calculations and conversions.
- Volume and nets.
- Marketing and finance
- Visual sequencing.
Assessment:
- Collect responses to the above conclusion.
- Photographs of toy
- Anecdotal discussions with students
Resources:
- Pens/Pencils
- Workbooks
- Cameras of some sort (digital/ipad/iphone, etc)
- Unifix or connector blocks
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