discovering malawi
DESCRIPTION
A project to strengthen relationships with a school twinning scheme and apply maths learning skills to a construction projectTRANSCRIPT
With Miss Thomas year 4 and 5
We began by looking at how colourful most of the buildings in Africa were, and
compared them with colourful buildings which had been constructed in Europe. These
looked like they were inspired from other building styles from around the world.
Every pupil recreated this template on a A2 sheet of card, this required careful
accurate measuring and mental arithmetic. Maths applied to a real world setting
Every pupil in the class made a scale model of the Mgosa school in Malawi and
decorated it with patterns, teaching equipment and images from traditional stories
We tried to predict the construction costs for the replica school building, by listing
and pricing all the required elements. The cost was well within our budget.
The application of maths to provide information, again in a real world situation.
The application of maths to construction tasks was used constantly as every cut line was
calculated and measured. This also required the use of hand held power tools to cut
materials to size and fix them together. Priming of all the boards was also done by pupils
We made this building in wet, occasionally snowy and always cold conditions
We have a blackboard inside the building as it is a school............. Remember!
We drew around ourselves with a pencil and then painted our own portraits
Everyone did their school badge and Rob might have helped with our faces
We had a basic pattern idea but had to adapt and modify it as windows and corners interrupted us
These are puppets, we could screw them to sticks and perform the stories
we have written. We also have made batik curtains using material dyes
We displayed the books written in class, the drums, and the batik curtains, and the blackboard. The
cut out animals were the characters in some of the books. One parent said my son comes home from
school every day and goes straight into the shed to saw and nail pieces of wood together together.