300 minutes for classroom activities.

The students will compete in a competition to design the Perfect Classroom. They will be required to do a scale drawing of the present makeup of the room. They will be required to give at least one major improvement to the room and create a new scale drawing. The students will be divided into groups and present their plan for the Perfect Classroom, which will be judged by their classmates for the best design.

Common Core State Standards   7.RP.1Compute unit rates associated with ratios of fractions, including ratios of lengths, areas and other quantities measured in like or different units. 7.RP.2Recognize and represent proportional relationships between quantities.

Students will be able to:

1. Know and understand the different steps of the design process.
2. Students will be able to measure the classroom space and covert it into smaller measurements for their models.
3. Will be able to work in cooperative groups.
4. Students Design the Perfect Classroom and articulate in a presentation the aspects that make it function as a perfect classroom.

http://fcit.usf.edu/math/lessons/activities/basebalT.htm http://fcit.usf.edu/math/lessons/activities/ShadowT.htm Interactive geometry/scale: http://illuminations.nctm.org/LessonDetail.aspx?ID=L259 http://illuminations.nctm.org/LessonDetail.aspx?id=U98  

Teacher Preparation

1. Schedule the computer lab to give the students the opportunity to research ideas for the perfect classroom and work on their presentation.
2. Make a presentation schedule.
3. Review the mathematics concepts that will be needed for the completion of the competition.
4. Design a rubric.
5. Divide the students into teams. Teams should range from 3-6 students depending on class size and take care to make sure each group has a strong math teacher.

  Introduce the Design Problem

1. The students need to create the perfect classroom. They need to look at it from all different perspectives (Teacher, student, and administration).
2. Day 1 the students will measure the dimensions of the room, record the data and create a scale drawing of the room and discuss how they will improve on the room.
3. Day 2 they will spend one class period discussing the pros and cons of the present classroom setup and researching how they can make it better. Their homework will be to survey at least 2 students, 2 teachers, and 2 administrators to find out what would be aspects of their perfect classroom.
4. Day 3&4 the students will brainstorm the information collected and create their scale drawing for their perfect classroom and prepare for their presentation.

Day 5 the groups will present their model to the classroom.

See Attached Rubrics.

Enrichment to the activity would be to focus on the cost effectiveness of the improvements to the classroom. The design could also be focused on the perfect classroom for any discipline taught.