Lesson video

Hello, my name is Mrs. Bishop, and I will be your design and technology teacher for today.

Welcome back.

I hope that you are enjoying studying our unit, which is called, "Keep it safe: shell, "solid and combination structures." This is lesson eight of 10, and in today's lesson, we'll be measuring, marking out, cutting, and shaping materials for own structure that we have been designing.

Now, remember that we are designing a prototype of a structure, and I hope that you've enjoyed making techniques so far.

Let's see what we're going to do today.

In today's lesson, you will need a pencil to draw and sketch with.

A ruler to measure accurately.

Card, you may use a range of recycled or normal card, whatever you've got to hand.

Some scissors, and you must remember that scissors must be used under the supervision of a parent or carer.

You may also use some tape today.

And you could use sticky tape or masking tape, depending on what you've got at home.

Today, I would have liked you to have started with your intro quiz.

Well done if you've done that, if not, you can pause the video and go and have a go at that now.

Today, we will start with measuring with accuracy.

And we'll think about how we can measure more accurately in design and technology lessons.

Then we will look at cutting and shaping with growing accuracy, and what tools we can use to help us with that.

After that we will think about sketching, and how designers use sketching throughout their designer-made projects to create better structures.

Finally, I'm going to give you some time to continue making your structure.

And at the very end, I would like you to complete your exit quiz for me.

Now, today, we have some keywords.

I will say each keyword and I would like you to repeat them after me.

Then I will read a definition of the keyword.

Our first keyword is assembling.

Can you say assembling? Assembling is to put together different components to create or build a structure.

Our next keyword is measuring.

Can you say measuring? Measuring is using a ruler or other device to calculate the length of a line.

Our next keyword is shaping.

Can you say shaping? Shaping is to mould or manipulate a material to give it a particular form.

Our final word is accuracy.

Can you say accuracy? Accuracy is the degree of precision in our drawings or measurements.

And accuracy is very important in design and technology so that we can make structures that are fit for purpose and fit for our users.

I want you to think back to what we've learned before.

Remember that we've learned about different types of structures called shells, solids, and combination structures.

We then chose which structure we wanted to make.

We created a detailed sketch of the structure.

And then we began to make and strengthen a model of our structure.

Today, I want you to continue to make that model, thinking about how you can make it better for your user or for your purpose.

Let's begin by looking at measuring with accuracy, which is a very important skill to a designer so that we can make structures that meet the needs of our users and the context they'll be used with it.

Which tool can you use at home to measure with accuracy? What is it? It would be a ruler, and rulers have a scale on them.

And this helps us to measure more accurately.

This one is marked in centimetres and half-centimeters.

Some rulers will also be marked in millimetres.

And they are a unit of measurement often used by real life designers because they're much smaller than centimetres and give us a much more precise measurement.

There are 10 millimetres in one centimetre.

Now let's have a look at some lines together.

I wonder which of these lines measures eight centimetres.

Pause the video now and have a look.

Welcome back.

Which line do you think measures eight centimetres? Looking at all of the lines, I'm looking for quite a long line because eight centimetres is nearly the full length of the ruler that I had.

So I'm thinking it might be line one or line three.

Oh, let's have a look then.

Well, line one starts at zero and ends at eight, so it measures eight centimetres.

The other lines measure different amounts of centimetres.

Line two measures two centimetres.

Line three measures seven centimetres.

And line four is slightly different.

It starts at six centimetres and ends at 10 centimetres.

What is the difference between six and 10? It's four.

So line four measures four centimetres.

Let's look at the next one.

Which of these lines measures two centimetres? Pause the video and have a think.

What did you think? That's right, it was line three.

Line three measures two centimetres because it starts at zero and ends at two.

There are some other lines on the screen.

I wonder what you noticed about two of them.

That's right, line one and line two both measure nine centimetres.

And line four measures four centimetres again.

Right, let's look at this one.

Which of these lines measures four centimetres? Pause the video and have a think.

Welcome back.

I wonder which line you thought measured four centimetres.

Well, let's have a look at it together.

It was actually line number four because we can see that it starts at six and ends at 10.

And the difference between six and 10 is four centimetres.

So that line measures four centimetres.

Some of you might have said that line two measures four centimetres.

But what do you notice about line two? Can you see that the start of the line does not start at zero? It actually starts at the edge of the ruler.

And that actually means that that line measures quite a few more centimetres.

So we have to be very careful to always start measuring at the zero on our ruler.

Now let's look at this one.

Which of these lines measures 8.

5 centimetres or 85 millimetres? Pause the video and have a think.

Welcome back.

Let's look at the answer together.

Line number one does measure up to 8.

5 on the ruler, or 85 millimetres.

But can you see that the end of the line starts at the end of the ruler instead of zero? So therefore it would actually measure longer than 85 millimetres.

So it cannot be line number one.

Let's look at line number two.

It does start at zero.

It only measures to six centimetres or 60 millimetres, so it's not line two.

That leaves us with line number three.

It does start at the end of the ruler at the zero.

And also, it measures up to 85 millimetres or 8.

5 centimetres so it was line number three.

Designers often use millimetres so they can have a more accurate and precise measurement, meaning that the products and structures that they design will be the most fit for purpose.

Today, I want you to pause your video to complete this task.

I would like you to have a go at measuring with growing accuracy.

So you use a ruler and a pencil.

Draw and measure lines of two centimetres, five centimetres, six centimetres, and 10 centimetres.

If you're looking for a challenge today, try and measure lines of 2.

5 centimetres, 34 millimetres, 4.

7 centimetres, 55 millimetres, 7.

2 centimetres, and 9.

8 centimetres.

This is really good practise for whenever we would come to make and design our structures.

Welcome back.

I hope that you have been successful with measuring your lines.

The next thing we are going to look at is cutting and shaping with growing accuracy.

This is really important to do as a designer so we end up with the best finish to our structure.

We often alter and change our designs as we go along, and that's perfectly acceptable.

And that's what a real life designer does.

Which tool could you use at home to cut and shape with accuracy? That's right, you could use a pair of safety scissors.

And it's very important that you use these under the supervision of an adult or a carer.

Now, do you think this circle has been cut with accuracy? This is false, can you see that the edges are uneven? it's important to cut with accuracy to maintain the correct shape of the structures that we are making.

Now, we can change shape by using cutting techniques.

So if I have a simple square, I could change it into many different shapes.

Here's my first one.

I can change it into this shape by taking off the two top edges.

I could round my edges to create this type of shape.

And you can see how that might be more attractive and might be safer for some of my users of my structures so that there are less pointy edges.

I could also round all the edges to create a sort of semi sort of circle shape.

I could use my shape to create a parallelogram, which might be useful in my structure.

I could cut off just one corner if I need to.

Maybe I'll need that slope for something in my structure.

So all times I want to think about if I'm using changing shapes in my structures.

I could also just round off the two top there, and that might be useful in my product.

What I want you to do now is I want you to cut and shape with more accuracy.

So with an adult's or carer's supervision, have a go at cutting out some different shapes.

Can you cut out a circle perhaps? An internal cut or a right angle? A right angle are where two lines meet at 90 degrees.

And an internal cut is where we cut out something on the inside of a piece of cardboard.

So give that a go for me now.

Welcome back.

Well done for having a go at that task.

I'm just going to show you how I might do those things on that task.

The first one I'm going to look at is how to cut a 90 degree internal cut using my scissors.

So what I might do is if I want to cut that, I might cut one cut this way, and then take my scissors out, and then cut another cut here.

Actually, by separating up my cuts, I can do it a little bit easier, okay? That's one way I could do that bit.

Doing an internal cut is a little bit trickier.

What we can sometimes do is we can put a pencil into our cardboard to create a small hole.

You must do this with an adult's supervision please.

So if you push through the cardboard, you should get a small hole like this one.

And that can help me to insert my scissors.

And again, I can use it to cut out a different shape.

And again, I do one cut at a time to create a 90 degrees cut inside of my shape.

And this could be if sort of we're making structures that perhaps need windows cut out of them or shapes cut out of them.

I don't know, perhaps in a castle, you might want to have different windows or doors.

So again, we can cut out all of this bit and we end up with an internal cut that's on the inside of the cardboard.

If you find that quite tricky, then also, what you can also do is fold the cardboard over like this and you can cut along, one line along.

And another line along, and then you can cut this bit out.

And what you end up with when you unfold the cardboard is another type of internal cut.

But you will have the bends on the cardboard here.

The other one I asked you to do was to cut out a circle.

To cut out a circle, sometimes I find it easiest to draw around something first.

So I might draw around the sellotape to help me make a circle.

Just a quick sketch.

And then I can use that to help me to cut out a circle.

And again, I think about how I can move the cardboard around.

I'll do smaller cuts, starting at the pivot of my scissors, all the way around like that.

And you can see that I'm moving my cardboard around as I cut.

And that's a really good way to get a really good circular shape.

Now that we have had a go at measuring with accuracy and cutting with more accuracy, we're going to have a look at sketching, and how designers use sketching throughout the making process.

Sometimes we call it thinking with a pencil.

Sometimes what happens is that when we start designing and making our structures, we get stuck and we struggle to think what to do next.

And sometimes a really good thing to do is to go back to the drawing board and sketch again.

And sketching is such an important way to also show our products because sometimes we will not have a model of our product.

And sometimes a sketch is a really good idea to communicate ideas about products.

So perhaps today, as you start to make your structure, you could use sketching as a tool to help you to make your structure better.

Now we're going to look at making a structure using measuring, cutting, and shaping accurately.

I want you to think back all the making you've done before, and now I want you to continue to make the model of your structure.

We will make sure we measure, cut, and shape the cardboard accurately using the making techniques we have learned.

And last time we learned about making flanges and slots.

We learned about making different ways to join cardboard using tabs as well.

We also thought about ways to strengthen our models using things like laminating and corrugating.

Perhaps you found different ways of using different materials.

We'll also use sketching to help us if we are stuck or if we want to improve our designs.

I want you to pause the video to complete your next task.

I want you to spend time continue making the model of your structure using measuring, cutting, and shaping cardboard with accuracy.

Of course, you might use different techniques if you are using different materials for your structure.

Remember, if you get stuck, use sketching to alter your design and to improve it.

As a designer, we often work in a cycle where we sketch and design and make, and we go backwards and forwards, evaluating as we go.

So let's pause our video now to complete that task.

Thank you for joining me in today's lesson.

I hope that you have enjoyed continuing to design and make your structure.

Don't worry if you came across some problems because we still have one more lesson in this unit where we will be designing and making.

Remember to use some of the techniques that we are learning about to make absolutely fantastic structures.

I'm really looking forward to seeing you again soon.

In the meantime, if you want to, you could share the work that you have been doing with me.

To do this, all you need to do is ask a parent or carer to share your work on Twitter tagging @OakNational and #LearnWithOak.

I know I'd love to see your structures.

Until next time, I hope you stay safe and healthy.

And I look forward to seeing you again soon, goodbye.