Structural Safety

Peter wanted to do a lesson that he had done previously with the family of schools during a transitions workshop.  He made a few modifications to the question, and then decided to give it to his class as part of a final assessment for his measurement strand.

His three part lesson went as follows:

Minds on:  The students talked about what they would need to rebuild a building after it had been knocked down. 

Action:  The students worked on a problem that asked them to pick which support structure they should choose and why.  They were given a choice of a cylinder, a triangular prism, and a rectangular prism.

Consolidation:  As a class, the students talked about the "Pros" and "Cons" of using each shape.  This was recorded on the chart below.

The teachers in the group then headed back to the debrief room to debrief the lesson, and also do a bit of moderated marking.  Using the achievement chart as their guide they marked several piece of student work and gave some feedback to the students.  The discussions were really rich and really centered around why a mark would or would not be awarded.  Here is some of the student work, and how it was assessed:

Part 1 of the student "a"'s work

Part 2 of student "a"'s work.

Part 1 of student "b"'s work.

Part 2 of student "b"'s work.