Grand Designs and Structures

This 80-page booklet features line designs, fun with circles, impossible pictures and nets for some very interesting solids. There are lots of ideas on how to arrange your art to form some really grand designs. Don’t just photocopy the pages to make a small model. They are there to give you ideas on how to make each shape, so expand your mind and create some really grand structures. With the pages in this book, your maths classroom is about to be transformed from a blank canvas to a visual symphony!

Those teachers that remember teaching school mathematics in the 1970s and 80s will remember classroom walls full of student’s work. There were usually strings from one end of the room to the other with mathematical models and posters hanging off them. By contrast today’s maths rooms are bare and lessons are dominated by PowerPoint slides, videos and computers (when we can book them!).
Despite all these new innovations there are still students who cannot use a ruler, measure or draw a straight line. There are some who do not know what to do with a compass. Because they cannot manipulate and deal with solid figures, they cannot visualize what they look like if viewed at different angles. The same number of students are failing and passing but what is evident is that mathematics is not as fun as it was before. It has become a mechanical process of passing tests and accumulating grades for a final report at the end of each year.

This book is a result of me dusting off my old teaching notes. By the end of the year your classroom can be a visual symphony. You can have posters of mathematical images on the walls, giant platonic solids hanging from the ceiling. Students should be able to spell words like icosahedron and decahedron. They should have researched about them and done a presentation to the class. They should know why they are important to mathematicians.

The following pages provide a rich selection of activities for your students. Don’t just copy the sheets and hand them all the same activity. If doing a session on line designs make sure that you give out 3 or 4 different designs. Combine them all on the wall to make a mural. Now it’s time to challenge your other classes to make their mural more interesting and visual. There are many nets to try from simple cubes to more time-consuming structures. Copy them onto larger pieces of card. Each one has a possible story and background to research.

Before you know it your class will be drawing chalk diagrams in the middle of the playground and all the other teachers and students will look on in envy. Your students will talk about maths in their other classes and they will remember your classes for years to come. I hope you and your students enjoy using these pages and that they stimulate a wealth of ideas for future lessons.