This week I need some resources to demonstrate plans and elevations. There are several Wisweb applets from the Freudenthal Institute which are excellent for this topic. These work well on the interactive whiteboard for demonstrating to students, they are also ideal for students to explore themselves.
Cube houses shows several models with their elevations, select drawing then 3d-model to give a model you can rotate to generate different views.
Readers familiar with the excellent Improving Learning in Mathematics materials may recognise the applets for building houses; these are described in SS6 – Representing 3D shapes which has suggested lesson activities and describes the applets (see pages 4 and 5).
Building Houses allows you to create buildings and see the plan, front and side elevations as you build.
You can add (build) or remove (break down) bricks and control the size of the square base.
Building houses with side views challenges students to construct 3D models given the plans and elevations; the task is made more challenging by specifying that as few cubes as possible should be used.
Note that in order to achieve the minimum number of cubes, ‘floating’ cubes are needed.
Note that these resources have been added to the ‘explore‘ series of pages on the companion blog for students.
Update - these resources worked well with my students – they particularly enjoyed the challenge of trying to build models using the minimum number of cubes!
Readers interested in the Improving Learning in Mathematics materials further may find IWB Resources useful as it has a flipchart and notebook file for each of the activities. This site is a result of the NCETM research project: Enabling enhanced mathematics teaching with some interactive whiteboards (September 2006- September 2008) and is supported by the IWB research team at Keele University and the www.iwbmaths.co.uk team. See also the link on the reading page to Malcolm Swan’s Improving Learning in Mathematics – Challenges and Strategies.
