Are you making the most of your school building? Would you like to learn more about how to use architecture as a teaching resource to deliver the Curriculum for Excellence? Architecture and Design Scotland offer daytime and twilight CPD sessions in your school to give staff the tools and ideas they need to really make the most of their own school building and deliver built environment education without having to leave the school grounds. Learn to look at your space in a new and exciting way.
This CPD opportunity enables teachers to deliver the ‘Model School’ project developed by architects Kathy Li of Strathclyde University and Andy Campbell of Dress for the Weather. The project involves a series of lesson plans which cover all areas of the Curriculum for Excellence taking students from a basic understanding of architecture through to completing a design for their ideal school building.
Model School Resource
The world of architecture and design is the perfect medium to assist teachers to holistically deliver a huge range of the Curriculum for Excellence in one neat project. Aimed at P4-P7 pupils, the ‘Model School’ project is devised to utilise your school building as a learning tool for your class to discover exciting new things about their built environment.
There are 5 stages to the project culminating in the challenge for your class to design and make a model of the perfect school. Consecutive stages build knowledge to carry out the final task. Every stage has interesting and fun tasks and could be delivered as a standalone project if you wish.
You can download the pdf for the stage you require by clicking on the title, or download the complete pack here. Each stage provides the information you need to create the lesson, including relevant subject information, lesson plans, assessment sheets, specific curriculum references, plus images and useful links for further reading.
Task: Paper Transformers
The following set of lessons introduce the class to the Model School project and raise awareness of the subject of architecture, what it is, and how it affects us, it should involve and engage the class in the built environment.
Model School Teacher Resource Clip 1 – Paper Transformers
Task: Spaghetti and Cardboard Towers
This part of the project provides the class with small building blocks of knowledge which help them to work on their own in latter stages. The first two lessons are highly interactive.
Model School Teacher Resource Clip 2 – Spaghetti Towers
3 – Communicating Architecture
Task: Lilliput Classroom
In the beginning of any architectural design the building is only an idea which needs to be developed and communicated to the people involved.
Model School Teacher Resource Clip 3 – Mini Me
Task: My School Map
We experience our surroundings, not just visually, but through all our senses. This is how we interperet the atmosphere of a place. Our emotions also play an important part in how we feel about a space.
Model School Teacher Resource Clip 4 – My School map
Task: Model classroom and Model school
This stage is seen as the culmination of knowledge gained in Stages 1-4 but can also be seen as a stand alone project. Each child will create their own learning space, these will be combined, and collectively the class will create a Model School
Model School Teacher Resource Clip 5 – Model Classroom
Model School Teacher Resource Clip 6 – Project Outcomes
The first series of twilight workshops are took place in May 2011 and were very well received.
A Glow Meet with Kathy Li explaining the project is available to watch again here. You will need to log into Glow to see this.
For more information and to book this exciting development opportunity please contact: