Dreams Meet Budgets 
​                                                                                                       By:  Matt Stout

Project at a Glance :

Students will be designing the exterior of a type of a house via the game of Life.  Students will spin a spinner to determining their “professions” and the professions will determine how much money students have to spend on their home.  Students will then then research various styles of homes while determining where in the world they want to build their house of choice. They will then create the exterior of their style home while calculating the surface area and total cost. Students will conclude by presenting their house to the class (why they choose what they did) and end with a dot vote for the most creative house.
       
Driving Question:

​How can we design a potential home exterior while meeting a budget?            

Standards:

• Design and build the exterior of a house while calculating surface area and building cost.

Team / Culture Building:

• ​Creative Sequence Assessment to build a balanced group of students for their project. 
• Hopes, Fears, & Norms​​

Entry Event:

•  Explore a virtual tour of various houses throughout time. ​

Stakeholders:

• Students
• Construction Workers
• Architects
• Administration

Empathy Building:

• Create a homeowners Empathy Map.   Stress that not everyone is going to have a great big house depending on their budget. ​​

Inquiry / Need to Knows:

•  The topic proceeding the project will all be about surface area.  Students will also need to know how to find the total cost of their project (*material  unit cost). ​

Incubation:

• Use the Poker Chip strategy to ensure all  student's voices are heard in the group.  Each student will have  three chips and every chip has to be a different solution idea. 
• YES, AND CAN IT? protocol to push students thinking.
• RIP, SLAP, AND PASS protocol to share ideas with the group. 

Checking in:

•  There will be a daily check in. The teacher will set up milestones that they should be at by the start/end of each class. With five or six groups working teacher can check in often with groups to track progress and provide feedback.
• Use  the NUF test to analyze their final design.  This will allow all students to share their ideas on the project and get a better idea of what the final product will include.​

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Solution Building:

• Use the Chalk Talk strategy and ask each student to draw a picture of what the final product will look like.  Followed by a Gallery Walk for feedback. Students will use Dot Voting to narrow down solution ideas.
• Groups will also give feedback in the form of I like, I wish, What if?
• Once the group has it narrowed down to 2-3 ideas, students will use the  Filtering and Objective protocol to identify the finishing touches on the house.

Critique and Revision: 

• Groups will be paired with another group and use the CHARRETTE protocol.  This will let groups present their project so far to another group and why they chose what they did.  In return they can get constructive criticism about their project before they will be presenting to the class. 

Authentic Audience:

• Students
• Construction Workers
• Architects
• Administration

Final Presentation:

•  Each group will give a minute long Elevator Pitch on the shapes of their house and why they chose to build their house the way that they did. Hoping they can pitch to a contractor.
• Students can build their Prototype out of Legos, draw their house on posterboard, create their house on Minecraft or anything other computer aided program. ​​

Click here for teacher's full plan.

​Reflection and Feedback:

• ​Students will complete a rubric consisting of questions related to the groups progress throughout the project. ​
•  Students will use sticky notes (anonymous) to write what they liked about the other groups project and what they wonder about the groups project. 
• Students will be able to use the sticky notes and reflect upon the advice given from their peers and address it in their individual summary/team grade.

How can the authentic audience also give feedback?????????????????????

Check out the teachers Journey through PBL on Padlet . . .

Meet the Educator:
Matt Stout teaches Geometry and Honors Geometry at Holland High School.

     "I love taking skills from the classroom and using them in application to the real world.  PBL helps to make this happen!"