This lesson helps students learn to identify the people who construct buildings and the tools workers use. Matching exercises, word wheels, and puzzles help students explore jobs and workers in their communities.
This lesson is from the Chicago Architecture Foundation's teacher resource book, Schoolyards to Skylines: Teaching with Chicago's Amazing Architecture.
Author:
Chicago Architecture Foundation Schoolyards to Skylines
Type of Activity:
indoor, desktop activities
Materials:
• Handout A - photographs of 6 Chicago-area construction workers
• Handout B - job titles of 6 construction workers
• Handout C - word wheel top
• Handout D - word wheel bottom
• Handouts E and F - mixed-up picture puzzles of a crane operator and a carpenter
• Handout G - picture puzzle template
• Handout H - photographs of iron workers building a skyscraper
• brass paper fasteners (one per student)
• scissors and glue
• crayons
• optional tools for display: paintbrush, hammer, screwdriver, saw, etc.
Preparation:
• photocopy Handouts A–F (one per student)
• photocopy Handout G (two per student)
Step 3:
Distribute Handouts C and D showing the two parts to the word wheel. Have students cut around the two large circles, then cut out the two large windows in the home and the rectangle piece to cover the bottom window. Place the picture of the home on top of the pictures of the tools and join the two circles together with a brass paper fastener. Students can color the home on the wheel as desired.
Step 4:
Give each student one copy of Handouts E and F (mixed-up picture puzzles) and two copies of Handout G (picture puzzle template). Have the students cut out the mixed-up puzzles and glue the correct pieces together on the templates.
Step 5:
Sing some of the new construction songs presented at the end of this lesson. You may need to relate some of the words in the songs to the workers and tools shown in Handout A. Or, bring in several real tools to show your students.
Extension Activities:
- Talk about different fixtures, furniture, and parts of your classrooms, discussing which of the six construction workers may have worked on them. Example: wooden desk / carpenter; brick walls / stone mason; sink and toilet / plumber;lights / electrician.
- Use wooden blocks, cardboard “bricks”, Legos®, Tinker Toys®, or Lincoln Logs® in your classroom to help strengthen the ability of students to visualize, design,
build, and think in three dimensions.
- If a construction project is occurring near your school, take advantage of this opportunity to observe workers in action. Talk frequently with your class about what is happening on the site and record the progress on a timeline or a picture chart.
- Play a game of charades. Have some students act out the different professions with the sounds that tools make, while the rest of the class guesses who they are pretending to be.
- Invite a guest speaker to your class. Send a list of these design, engineering, and construction professions home with your students, asking for volunteers to visit your classroom. A relative or friend who is a carpenter, for example, can be invited to talk about what they do and to show some of the tools used in their profession.
- Add some construction worker dress-up clothes and tools to your dramatic play area. Items such as a hard hat, work gloves, protective goggles, boots, overalls, and paintbrushes will provide many of opportunities for creative role-playing.
- Mix up some homemade Kool-Aid® playdough for your students to experience creative building. Provide them with plastic disposable knives, a rolling pin, and other tools so they may mimic construction workers and the work they do
