Views of Sheffield: Introducing plans and elevations

I had a bit of fun with Google maps and street view today. I was teaching a Y9 maths class, it was our first lesson on the plans and elevations topic.

I wanted them to

• understand what plan views and front or side elevations are
• consider what an object would look like when viewed from different directions
• start to draw plans and elevations of simple 3d shapes – but not necessarily to scale (I’m saving that for next lesson)

Our starter for 10

We started off with a very low-tech activity: I lined up 2 cups, a beaker and a bottle on top of a box, then stood on the opposite side of it to the students. I held up a drawing on a mini-whiteboard and said “This is what you can see,” I asked them to draw what I could see.

I’ve done this in the past without holding up the example, but I’ve found that I need to draw the first one for them. That way they can see how to draw simple diagrams and I avoid a chorus of students telling me that the “can’t draw”. Once the students had drawn their answers,  I turned the box around so that they could check their work. Most of them did fine with that, although as expected, we did have to discuss issues relating to left and right.

I then asked them what would I be able to see after I had swapped the positions of some of the items, then what if I swapped some and gave them a half turn. Finally I showed them a plan view and a side view and asked where I would need to stand to see these.

By the end of this activity we had some good discussion going about left and right and students were starting to talk about different views.

A lesson of two halves

I then split the class into two groups. Half worked with me. We used some simple 3D solids and drew plans and elevations of them. It’s a big class (33 if they are all present), so it was good to get the chance to work with a smaller group.

The other half of the group used a worksheet [word version] [rtf format]. They were given plans and elevations of places in Sheffield city centre. They had to use Google maps and switch between satellite and street view to find the places. The students who tried this activity quickly made the connection that elevations were the ‘street view’. They also realised that they couldn’t always identify a location from a plan, even once they had found it on the satellite imagery, in most cases an elevation/street view was needed to identify the building.

No oranges for us at half time, but we did swap activities. The students who were working on the Google maps activity didn’t want to swap, I’m taking that as a positive sign. It certainly seemed like an enjoyable way to introduce this topic.