Year 4 3D Design (Teacher notes)
Progression of skills in this pack
3D Village Pupil Activity Pack skills:
1. Understand 3D spacial awareness.
2. Add 3D shapes, resize, adjust height, duplicate and use the different perspective.
3. Re-create different types of buildings using 3D shapes.
4. Create roads/paths by adjusting the height of 3D shapes.
5. Add windows and door shapes.
Lego Modelling Pupil Activity Pack skills:
1. Add, move, change colour and duplicate a brick.
2. Rotate bricks.
3. Use sloping bricks and special bricks for a purpose.
4. Change the transparency of bricks.
📝 National Curriculum Content
Select, use and combine a variety of software (including internet services) on a range of digital devices to design and create a range of programs, systems and content that accomplish given goals.
⏱ 6-8 hours
Introduction
Computer Aided Design is a key skill, both in terms of Computing but also across various other subjects, including Geography, Design and Numeracy. It also helps children with spatial awareness. This pack includes two pupil activity packs (3D Village and Lego Modelling).
Prior Learning
Pupils should have completed the Year 3 3D Design Pack before this pack.
👨🏫 Teacher Input
You can start by watching the video above, which introduces pupils to 3D design (also found in the 3D village pupil pack below). You could also watch the videos from the pupil activity packs together by following the links below.
🚦Differentiation
Once pupils have demonstrated the skills below, they can transfer their skills to other scenarios, such as more complex build, a 3D Solar system (using the TinkerCAD 3D village) or designing own transport, DT projects etc. There is also a TinkerCAD activity for pupils to simulate gravity by making a 3D course with a ball knocking over dominoes. The second activity pack (Lego modelling) could be used as an extension task.
🛠 What will teachers and pupils need?
For the 3D Village Pupil Pack below, pupils will need access to TinkerCAD which is free and works on all devices. Teachers can create a free account then create a class (each class has a code) and add pupils first names, which generates a nickname (to make it easier you could have nickname as first name). The pupils then go to www.tinkercad.com, join the class, type in the code and type in their nickname. There are detailed instructions of how to create a class and pupil accounts here. For each lesson, pupils type in the class code and their nickname to find their project which saves automatically. One way to make this easier is to to create one pupil within a class for pupils to share the nickname, such as the nickname ‘year4.’ Pupils can then name their projects (top left in the editor) their own name. This makes it easier to manage but the downside is that pupils will be able to access each other’s projects.
For the Lego Modelling Activity Pack below, pupils will need access to the free Mecabricks website. On iPads, pupils will ideally need a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard to use the Mecabricks website. In order to to save the work, pupils will need a Mecabricks account. You could create one generic username and password and link it to your teacher email address (though you may find the system doesn’t like this so you may have to create several accounts and group the pupils between them). Pupils can click File and then Save As and put their name. To open a project the following lesson, pupils sign in, then select File and Open and choose their project. Alternatively, pupils could take a screenshot of their design if they do not need to continue the next lesson. The links below describe how to do this for the different operating systems.
✅ Assessment
For the 3D Village activity, you can moderate and assess the work of pupils by clicking on the pupil names in the class on their teacher login in TinkerCAD. For the Lego activity, you could sign into the same account the pupils have saved their lego models to and find them by clicking the username in top right corner.
3D Village Pupil Activity Pack
Pupil Activity Code: 3D96 – What is it?
This pack includes a series of video tutorials demonstrating to pupils how to use the TinkerCAD website to create a 3D village using different shapes and skills. It ends with a 3D solar system example that pupils could try to create once they have created a 3D village.
3D Lego Modelling Pupil Activity Pack
Pupil Activity Code: 3D92– What is it?
This pack includes a series of video tutorials demonstrating to pupils how to use the Mecabricks website to create a lego snow mobile. Once pupils have created the same model they could start creating their own models.