Monument Museum

Introduction: School students need to study famous monuments of our nation. Some students are unable to visit them in person. Wouldn't it be great to have a monument museum in the school?

Task: With your class, design monuments, taking into account what you know about geometric shapes and measuring. Then create a museum complete with monuments and their descriptions. Open the monument museum to adults and students. Provide guides at each monument in order to answer questions.

Process:

1. Teachers created a paper bag for each monument their students needed to study by printing a picture of each monument and gluing it on a lunchbag.
2. Students put their name on a slip of paper and placed it in the bags/monuments they were interested in creating and studying. Names were drawn and the groups created.
3. The art teacher worked with each group to take a close look at the monument and decide what shapes they were going to need. Boxes, bowls, and tubes were collected and set aside. Then the groups worked with the art teacher to create the monuments.
4. In the classroom, students were studying about geometric shapes, measuring and mapping.
5. A real architect visited the students to discuss what goes into designing buildings. She showed lots of pictures.
6. A parent in the building trade also brought a slideshow to share with the students. Shapes and measuring were discussed.
7. Another visitor brought a dollhouse and discussed its creation.
8. Students used Tom Snyder's Community Construction Kit to create their own buildings taking into account the outside coverings of buildings, windows, doors, shapes, etc.
9. Students also had an opportunity to interact with building blocks from various types of architecture (Egyptian, Russian, Roman, basic, etc.)
10. Tom Snyder's Neighborhood Map Machine was used to create a large grid and students practiced placing and locating objects on a grid. They recreated those placements during an activity in the computer lab.
11. A Think Tac Toe board was put together to enhance classroom centers. All choices on the board had to do with geometric shapes or monuments.
12. Students and teachers read books about the various monuments.
13. With the help of the teacher, students filled in a data retrieval chart pertaining to their monument.
14. The teacher created a monument description from the information on the data retrieval charts.
15. Monuments were placed on student tables throughout the school halls. Descriptions were hung nearby with a postcard for each monument.
16. Student guides practiced answering questions about their monument.
17. Student monument builders had a chance to visit all of the monuments that had been created.

Monument Museum

1. The students gathered in the front lobby for the official ribbon cutting.
2. They sang the school song and the teacher said a few words.
3. Visitors were given a program which included suggested questions to ask the guides and a map.
4. The ribbon was cut and the museum opened. The guides went to their posts.
5. Visitors took in the sites and asked questions. They also left comments for the builders on post-it notes which they hung by the monuments.
6. After everyone visited the monuments, visitors and students came back to the classrooms to build their own snacks.

Opportunities to share:

1. Students created monuments which they shared with adult visitors and the students of the school.
2. They filled in data retrieval charts which were turned into descriptions of each monument and hung in the hall.
3. A book was put together about the monument museum.

Assessment:

1. Teachers used anecdotal notes to jot down information as students worked on the activities.

sample email from Assistant Principal	Architecture Think Tac Toe	data retrieval chart	Map grid worksheet cheat sheet for teachers that assigns stamps to each monument and tells where the stamp is located in KidPix
shapes and colors computer lesson-draw the correct shape in KidPix	more grid computer lessons	shape/color computer lesson- move the correct shapes in KidPix	shapes computer lesson-find stamps in KidPix

To see pictures from the unit, click on the monument.

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Unit designed by Jane Frydenlund and Gail Ritchie
Page created by Brooks Widmaier
December 11, 2002