Dinosaurs and Scale Models

  The other day while researching information on using scale model drawings for sculptures, I hit the jackpot when I stumbled across a website filled with videos and activities for scale models.

I am saying not 3, not 4, not 5, but 17 activities.  The over all title of the collection is "Scale City: The road to proportional reasoning" thanks to PBS and their Think Math.

Scale City with 8 video's on different aspects of scale models and accompanying interactive activities which has the students practice the skill introduced in the video.  The first topic is one dimensional scaling in the real world and it uses full scale models of dinosaurs.  The activity has students comparing a boy to a T-Rex in terms of size.  There are four questions, two hints, and once done the activity is graded so there is immediate feedback.

The second activity focuses on similar figures in the real world.  The video examines the world's largest bat at the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory. They learn about what it takes to make a bat and are asked to compare the size of a regular bat to the one in front of the factory.  The interactive has them use shadows to find the height of an unknown object.

The third topic examines outdoor murals to see how measurement and proportional reasoning is used by artists to scale up the piece of art from a scale model to the finished product.  The interactive activity examines the two dimensional scaling up of rectangles.  The fourth looks at scale models in real life such as model trains, doll houses, and architectural models while the activity encourages students to explore three dimensional modeling.

The fifth explores scaling up or scaling down recipes and how the change in the radius of a circle changes its area.  The sixth video focuses on the relationship between the size of an items shadow and its distance from a light source while the seventh introduces students to the idea that the length of a pipe or string has a proportional relationship to the sound produced.  The eighth one focuses on proportional relationships in real life while the last is a review.  

It is wonderful the way each video has an accompanying activity.  In addition to the interactive online activity, each video has a lesson plan which gives times for the introduction, the movie, and a small group activity before students are assigned the computer based activity.  Furthermore, there is a small connections section which provides links to other sites.

This is a collection of videos and activities designed for grades 6 to 7 but could easily be used with older students, especially ELL students.  I like it and plan to use it later on in the year when things slow down.  It is great to see something that has lots of real life examples for each aspect of the topic.

Let me me know what you think.  I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.