These free lessons show how the study of architecture supports the teaching of maths in junior & secondary schools. If you are attracted to the use of geometry of architecture to support your lesson plans but this is your first time, you may experience an unaccustomed enthusiasm in the classroom with a high demand for your attention. This may put you under pressure, leading you to give up. Be patient. Keep going. Have an assistant. Students will soon grasp the concepts.
These free lessons show how the study of architecture supports the teaching of maths in junior & secondary schools. If you are attracted to the use of geometry of architecture to support your lesson plans but this is your first time, you may experience an unaccustomed enthusiasm in the classroom with a high demand for your attention. This may put you under pressure, leading you to give up. Be patient. Keep going. Have an assistant. Students will soon grasp the concepts.
How to draw a lancet window with trefoiled apex
The instructions for the drawing on the following pages are based of a window in the nave at St Botolph’s Church in Northfleet Kent. The dimensions produce a drawing of a window that fits on an A4 page. Precision is required, and the task is easier on an A3 page, in which case the dimensions should be doubled.
Botolph was a saint venerated in the seventh century in the Kingdom of East Anglia, where he had lived as a monk in an abbey endowed by estates in the Kingdom of Mercia. Botolph mediated a fragile peace between these two warring states.
After his death, Botolph’s relics were conveyed to many different places where churches were later dedicated to St Botolph. As these churches were erected next to the cities’ gates or by fords, bridges and shire boundaries, he has become associated with travellers.
In blind arcading Saxon masons have combined a number of simple shapes, viz. semicircles, rectangles and trapezia to produce a pleasing and interesting architectural feature.
School Curriculum: At Key Stages 2 & 3 Manipulating simple shapes to produce complex designs.
Content: definition of a trapezium, area of a trapezium, illustrated easy-to-follow instructions on how to draw a trapezium.
Examples of blind arcading on Saxon church churches.
In Asia Minor the horseshoe arch has long been a structural and decorative motif adorning tombs, sarcophagi and stele. After the Eastern Christian Church adopted the shape it quickly spread to North Africa, Spain, Gaul, Italy and Rome itself.
How to draw a horseshoe arch:
School curriculum: Key Stage 4: measurement of arc length
Maths covered:
Arc length is the distance between two points on a curve. and is usually denoted by l or s, the latter from the Latin spatium meaning length or size.
s = (θ° ÷ 360°) x 2 π r
where theta θ is a measure of the angle subtended by either ci-e-di & co-e-do (fig. on lesson plan in degrees, π = 3.14 and r = the distance ae (fig.) in centimetres
If the arc is a semicircle
then s = π r
This lesson would serve as an extension of the lesson on a Roman arch and brace, itself extended by the lesson on a Romanesque or Norman arch
This exercise builds on earlier lessons on Gothic Early English architecture. It is a complex drawing suitable for top set project work for GCSE students
Content: the first exercise is a simple construction of a quatrefoil. It is followed by detailed and illustrated instructions on how to draw two adjoining trefoiled lights under a arched dripstone. The instructions that follow fills the apex above the two lights with a quatrefoil, with an option to do so with a pointed quatrefoil.
Key Stage 2 & 3 mathematics: Rotational symmetry occurs when a shape, on being rotated around a centre point a number of degrees, appears the same. The order of symmetry is the number of positions that a shape appears the same in a 360-degree rotation. An equilateral triangle has rotational symmetry of order three, i.e. it may be turned about its centre point into three identical positions. A trefoil and a pointed trefoil (see appropriate lesson plan), being constructed on an equilateral triangle, may be turned about their centre points into three identical positions, i.e. both have rotational symmetry of order three.
Key Stage 4 mathematics: A circle which touches the three vertices of a triangle is called the circumcircle of a triangle. The centre of a circumcircle is the point where all the perpendicular bisectors of the triangle’s sides meet. This point is called the circumcentre. The radius of the circumcircle is termed the triangle’s circumradius.
Having drawn a regular polygon, arcs can be drawn with their centre points at the vertices of the polygon, and the radii equal to half the length of the edges of the polygon. In this way a trefoil, quatrefoil, cinquefoil or multifoil is formed when each arc just touches its neighbours.
In 1254 a Catholic religious order was founded in France called the Order of Saint Augustine. Monks of this Order followed the teachings of St Augustine of Hippo who, in the fifth century, advocated the virtues of chastity, poverty and obedience as essential for a religious life. The monks were obliged to live together in peace and harmony, to share labour, pray together, and eat in silence. They were also to look after the sick.
Pilgrims flocked to their monasteries one of which was the Sanctuary of Rocamadour in South-West France. It is a spectacular monastery built into the side of a cliff on the pilgrim route known as the Way of St James. Unusually it has made use of lancet and trefoil design for an entrance.
How to draw an ogee arch
Illustrated and easy-to-follow instructions on how to draw an ogee arch.
The ogee or S-shaped arch is the principal architectural feature of the Decorated period church window. The ogee as an architectural motif has a long history: it had been used in India in antiquity; it arrived in Egypt in the ninth century, then in Venice in the thirteenth. Soon after it appearance in Venice, it turned up in England. Theories explaining the ogee’s appearance in England are explored.
School Curriculum: Key Stage 3 Mathematics: Draw and manipulate triangles, arcs and semicircles with increasing accuracy; identify their properties, including line symmetry.
This lesson is suitable for more able pupils at Key Stage 2 and most pupils at Key Stage 3. It is an exercise in drawing the frontal elevation of a Classical Doric temple. It reinforces skills in measuring, the accurate drawing of straight lines, and using a protractor.
Drawing a Doric temple supports the teaching of 2-D shapes in a novel and imaginative way, and covers the definitions and properties of rectangles and isosceles triangles.