Process

Introduction
Are you satisfied with the design of your bedroom? Have you seen advertisements for posters, TVs, or a bed you just have to have? Using measurement skills, you will create your own dream bedroom design!

Procedure
Step 1: What Makes a Room a Bedroom?
Brainstorm the elements a bedroom might have, such as bed, dresser, and television. Which items are needs and which are desires? What should a bedroom do for the occupant? If it contains a bed, do all beds have to be exactly the same?

Step 2: Practice Measurement Skills
Introduce the concepts of length, width, and perimeter to your students. Make sure that they know how to determine the surface area for simple rectangular shapes (width x length).

Have them practice their measurement skills in your classroom, determining the dimensions of your classroom and objects in it, such as your desk, student desks, and any chairs, tables, and bookcases. If you are working with older students, teach them how to find the area of polygons by breaking them into component shapes and estimating.

Assign students to take some basic measurements in their rooms at home and calculate the square footage. Have them measure some common bedroom elements such as beds and dressers.

Step 3: Sketch a Design
Have students begin by creating a paper sketch of their dream room. You might create a worksheet that has a 12 x 12 room with gridlines every 6 inches. The designs should include major elements that make it obvious this is a bedroom, like a place to sleep and a place to store clothes. Encourage them to think about accurate or appropriate space between objects.

Depending on students’ abilities, you may also ask them to add architectural details such as power outlets, doors, windows, cable access, and telephone access. How will they designate these items in their drawing? How will they show them to scale? Have students develop a key for their design using shapes and color.

Step 4: Create the Design on the Computer
Once students have a general idea of their room’s layout, have them launch Twist and start to design their room on the computer. Encourage them to use different fills to decorate each object and relate objects to the key. Have students print a final copy of their room design.

Step 5: Write a Description
Once students have a printed copy of their design to review, have them work on describing their dream room. You may want them to describe the room in one paragraph or have them combine several paragraphs into one descriptive essay. If students are new to descriptive writing, talk about putting together a descriptive paragraph. You can use the burger analogy–the meat, or main idea, of their paragraph, surrounded by juicy details, held together by the bun of introductory and concluding sentences. You may also want to share some ideas about descriptive writing from the Writing with Writers web site.

Step 6: Present and Share the Dream Rooms
Have students use the text in their descriptive essay, along with a picture of their dream room, to share their design ideas with the rest of the class. After all the students have presented, discuss the ideas you liked the best.

Return to your brainstorm about what makes a bedroom. Compare what the students have included in their designs to the elements they came up with on their list. Have the students’ opinions changed about what a bedroom should contain or be?

Assessment
Use the students’ measurements of their room to determine if they understand how to take measurements and determine surface area.

Use the design sketch and Twist room design to evaluate students’ ability to draw objects to scale and create 2-D representations of 3-D objects.

Evaluate their room description for the use of descriptive adjectives, voice, and organization.

Resources
Hallam, Linda. Decorating Kids’ Rooms: Nurseries to Teen Retreats.
ISBN: 069620729X.

Brunetto, Carolyn Ford. MathART Projects and Activities.
ISBN: 0590963716

Harcourt Animated Math Glossary
www.harcourtschool.com/glossary/math_advantage/glossary8.html

Writing with Writers
teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/diary/index.htm

Unique Furniture Designs
www.playfulrooms.com
www.mymoondrops.com

Standards
IRA/NCTE - Standards for the English Language Arts
5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).

NETS 3-5 Performance Standards
1. Use keyboards and other common input and output devices (including adaptive devices when necessary) efficiently and effectively. (1)
4. Use general purpose productivity tools and peripherals to support personal productivity, remediate skill deficits, and facilitate learning throughout the curriculum. (3)
5. Use technology tools (e.g., multimedia authoring, presentation, Web tools, digital cameras, scanners) for individual and collaborative writing, communication, and publishing activities to create knowledge products for audiences inside and outside the classroom. (3, 4)

NETS 6-8 Performance Standards
5. Apply productivity/multimedia tools and peripherals to support personal productivity, group collaboration, and learning throughout the curriculum.
6. Design, develop, publish and present products using technology resources that demonstrate and communicate curriculum concepts to audiences inside and outside the classroom.

NETS 9-12 Performance Standards
7. Routinely and efficiently use online information resources to meet needs for collaboration, research, publications, communications, and productivity. (4, 5, 6)
10. Collaborate with peers, experts, and others to contribute to a content-related knowledge base by using technology to compile, synthesize, produce, and disseminate information, models, and other creative works. (4, 5, 6)

Find more Frames lessons in the Recipes4Success Lesson Library!

Steps for Students

Designing in Twist™
You can set up a grid to draw to scale in Twist.

1. Launch Twist. A new document will open.

2. Click the Canvas button.

3. Click the Edit button in the Dimensions area of the Options panel.

4. Use the Units pull-down menu to change to inches.

5. Type the dimensions of your room in the width and height fields with 1 inch = 1 foot.

6. Click the Go Back button.

7. Click the Grid check box.

8. Change the Spacing to 0.5 inches so that every square in the grid represents 6 inches.

9. Use the Zoom slider so you can see the entire document in the workspace.

10. Use the Shape tools to draw the main pieces in your room.

11. Use the Fill options to add color and texture to the objects in your design.

12. Use the Shape and Text tools to create a key for the features in your room.

13. Click the Save button on the toolbar to save your design.

14. Click the Print button on the toolbar to print a copy of your design.