Well, for a teacher who is kind of techno-dependent, my world was turned upside down when the bulb in my projector went out and no bulbs were to be had! Instead, they opted to take out my dinosaur of a projector and give me a new one! Whoop!
However, this process took a little while, so it was back to old school teaching...
The kids had a great time today designing the floor plan of their candy shop. Yesterday we had marked the dimensions of the shop on grid paper, but I felt it was necessary for them to visually understand what 24' x 28' looked like. So, I brought in a measuring tape and we discovered that their candy store is just about the same dimensions as my classroom. They found this very helpful!
Next, we had to discuss the need for a door. I explained that federal regulations require a door to be at least 3' wide so that it is wheel chair accessible. We discovered my door was 3' by 7' (again with a tape measure). I then showed them how an architect would show this demarcation on blueprints using (gasp) my whiteboard and dry erase marker! We did not include windows on our floor plan this time.
Our next topic was the checkout counter. We discussed the need for its placement by the door. We measured a table in my room to get an idea of what might be a comfortable amount of work space for a check out counter. It was also important to discuss the amount of area to have behind the counter to be able to maneuver comfortably in the space. I also asked that they label the counter area so that I would know what I was looking at.
We then looked at the example given in the packet and made notes of things that were included. It was interesting that one of my students felt that the floor plan example was missing a very important element.... a bathroom. We discussed this in each class with some students choosing to include a bathroom and others deciding that it was fine to leave it off the plan (of course I don't know what they plan to do if they actually worked there!). We decided that if we were doing a single bathroom a 6'x6' would be adequate for a toilet and sink, however, I did have some students who wanted to include multiple toilets. This meant that they needed to include stalls, so one sweet young lady headed down to the bathroom with a tape measure to determine the measurements for a stall. You have to love it.... real world application!
Then I handed out the sheet of candy types and the display dimensions and let the kids begin designing. We made sure to also give enough walking space within the area for students to walk around and to displays. My students agreed that 3' was the minimum requirement, but felt that 4' would be much better.
Before finishing up for today, I asked my students to choose one of their displays and write the coordinates for the display on an index card. I just wanted to be sure they understood how to write coordinates and that they understood how to read an x- and y- axis.
As usual, we finished with a Countdown to STAAR.
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