The title of this activity is a play on words, because students will be building community with their team, but they are also building a 3D community out of paper at the same time.
Many courses have strands and standards that involve teamwork and collaboration. For Family and Consumer Sciences Exploration in Utah, this activity works well with the following strands and standards:
- I
can explore the importance of employability skills (Strand 4 Standard 1) including
the following:
- Effective communication
- Problem solving
- Teamwork
- Critical Thinking
- Dependability
- Accountability
- Legal Requirements/Expectations
For Utah College and Career Awareness classes, this activity gets even more bang for the buck, meeting the following standards:
- I can discuss the benefits of strong workplace skills and the negative consequences of underdeveloped workplace skills. (Strand 2 Standard 1)
- I can complete tasks on time. (Strand 2 Standard 2)
- I can exhibit self-motivation and self-discipline. (Strand 2 Standard 2)
- I can show respect for others. (Strand 2 Standard 2)
- I can be responsible for my own actions. (Strand 2 Standard 2)
- I can demonstrate strong work ethic. (Strand 2 Standard 2)
- I can explore various methods of communication and can use effective and appropriate communication for the given situation. (Strand 2 Standard 3)
- I can identify and demonstrate effective collaboration and teamwork skills. (Strand 2 Standard 5)
3d Community Building takes minimal preparation and supplies but provides a lot of engagement. Students love this activity!
Here’s what you need to have ready in advance for each team or table.
- 4 pieces of cardstock
- 1 tape dispenser
- Colored pencils
- Scissors
And here are the rules for the activity which you can also find posted on the Canvas Commons as “3D Community Building.”
Your teacher will give each team 4 pieces of paper or cardstock and will allow you to use tape, glue, colored pencils, and scissors. Each team will have the same amount of time to create the following 3-dimensional items:
- At least 1 building
- At least 1 vehicle
- At least 1 tree, shrub, or other plant
- At least 1 person
- Any other elements of a city you would like to build
All items you build should match each other in scale and should be similar in style. That means that as a team, you should choose a theme for your community so that the items look like they belong together. When we finish building, each team will share their work and their process with the class.
As I am explaining this activity to students, there are a few things I make sure they are clear on. The first is that they will only get 4 pieces of cardstock! If they have 5 people on their team—4 pieces of cardstock. If they have 3 people on their team—4 pieces of cardstock. They can’t ask for more cardstock. Using their supplies effectively is part of the requirement. If they come to me in 15 minutes and tell me that they made a mistake and need more paper to start over, I tell them that they need to figure out how to problem solve with the mistakes they made and the supplies they had.
We talk about what it means to make their items 3-dimensional. I do allow for paper people to be flat, as long as they can stand.
We talk about scale, and how a car should not be smaller than a person or taller than a house.
And we talk about choosing a theme. I have seen all kinds of creative themes chosen for this activity—old Western towns, alien towns, New York City street scenes, vacations on the beach, campsites, “under the sea” scenes, scenes from shows and movies, and the list goes on. I look forward to 3D community building because the kids often surprise me. Just last week, I had students create a pop-up beach scene. It was delightful! And yes, I do allow boats to count as vehicles.
Once students start working with their team, they need approximately 40 minutes to build their scene and feel ready to share with the class. Some teams go a little faster or a little slower. When a majority of teams have mostly cleaned up their scraps and mess and are ready to share with the class, I have a spokesperson from each team share what they made. After every team has shared, we have a class discussion using both pair/share with students at tables as well as whole-group sharing. The discussion is how I make sure we have met the day’s objectives. I tell students that as long as they have participated effectively and respectfully in both the building activity and the discussion, I can see that they have met the standards for the day, and I can give them points for this activity and its objectives based on their participation. That makes this activity quick to grade, even for a large class!
These are some of the questions I typically ask during the class discussion, and I believe these questions connect well to the standards, but you can use your own questions, depending on the objectives for the activity in your classroom:
- How did your group split up the various responsibilities, meaning, did you share in various responsibilities or did specific people do specific things, such as leader, architect, artist, object designer, builder? Were formal assignments given or did the responsibilities just happen?
- What made communication most effective for your team?
- What are some real-life workplace skills you used as part of this activity?
- What are some of the things that your group did that helped the group cooperate and be successful?
- What did you learn about decision-making in a work or teamwork environment?
- What were the positives and negatives of working with a group?
- What are some things you could have done to work together better as a team?
I hope you love this activity! If you use it with your classes, I’d love to get some feedback on how it went. Also, what would you change to improve the activity? I can always make improvements to my own lessons!
Below is one of my favorite ever 3D communities. The 4-person team that made this creation was incredibly in sync! The figure standing on top is Willy Wonka on a green hill of candy trees over the top of a chocolate river. The vehicle is a violet, Viking-style boat floating on chocolate inside the chocolate factory.
