Students identify major build considerations and home components to guide the design process.
This activity is designed as a Think-Pair-Share activity to allow the students to develop a list of critical home systems that need to be considered as they design their tiny homes. Some examples are plumbing, electrical, wastewater management, propane, climate control, etc. but the idea is for the students to brainstorm, research, and develop their own comprehensive design checklists that break these broad categories into even smaller and more manageable system components that will be used during their design and evaluation phases.
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Teacher: How would we know that we have all necessary systems in our build? Think of all systems that would be needed in our home.
Student: makes a list of all the systems they think of and prepare to share that with the class
Teacher: Get with a classmate or small group and create a complete list of the systems and have a defensible reason why it is a necessary system.
Student: Work with classmate group to create more complete list
Teacher: Allow each group to provide just one system from their list and go around the room until all systems have been shared. ( This should allow each group to contribute at least one system to the list) and they should defend their system choice. This is not the method for the system yet. After all systems have been shared and listed on board have the students determine if any should be optional and then take the final list and create a chart paper for each.
Teacher will have the students now think of methods to achieve that system objective. This will be shared through the carousel.
Teacher: Take the charts with the systems shared as a header and have the groups now rotate to each chart and write the specifics with a method (only one method) as they rotate the next groups will add any that are not on the list and if they have nothing new to add they should put a check mark by the ones they had. Once all methods are on the chart we have a working list to develop a checklist.
Simple web searches will reveal an abundance of available builder/design checklists for various types of homes. These can be used for refinement of the lists that the students have developed or can even be starting points if you'd rather begin here. These lists will help the groups insure that they have considered all essential components for their designs and can help them begin planning to create their bill of materials and total cost projections.
Sample Results
Ask students to research sustainable building practices that they might include in their designs. Building techniques or materials might be considered to allow for passive solar heating and/or cooling, daylighting to reduce lighting needs during the day time, solar lamps for night time that operate independently of the home's primary electrical system, wind/solar generators specifically for powering low power electronics and appliances, etc.
Sample Resources