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Challenge
Within the metaphoric situation
‘The Dressmaker’, pupils are
asked to make a pattern for
clothes for the Cube. To do this
the following are available: a
model of a cube, six squares of
the same size as the faces of
the cube, stickers, a big sheet
of paper and pencils
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Challenge
• The task was presented as a
story: Mr. Cube has just arrived on
Earth coming from the Cube
Planet and he has no clothes.
• We have to find as many clothes
patterns for him as possible.
• Each pattern will be made of six
squares.
• We have to make sure he can put
on the new clothes.
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Challenge
• As a supplementary task: find the
“zippers” of the clothes.
• The clothes should be coloured in
an attractive way.
• Find the symmetrical patterns.
• Are they all in pairs?
• Have you found all the nets? How
many are there?
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Comments
• The constructivist approach is
obvious.
• The metaphoric language is clear,
the clothes are the nets of a cube.
Its role is to appeal to real life
situations.
• The cube is not a building block
anymore, but an “individual”.
• The real challenge is not to find a
net, but all the possible ones.
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Comments: strong points
• Some of the pupils had the
idea of using first pins instead
of stickers to connect the
squares.
• They grasped the “zippers”
idea very quickly.
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Comments: strong points
• Some groups shared roles and
therefore worked very quickly.
They even expressed the cause of
their efficiency: teamwork.
• They had the idea of having five
fixed squares and a mobile one, in
order to find more nets.
• They found the symmetrical nets
(“brother and sister”).
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Comments: weak points
• A funny one: after finding two
symmetrical nets, they turned one
of them upside down and said: we
have triplets!
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Conclusions
• It was a task the pupils particularly
enjoyed, despite the time and
effort they had to put into it.
• It took them into 3-dimensional
space and had a “story” attached
to it, these are two of the reasons
it was so popular.
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Follow-up
• Create at least one clothes pattern
for Mr. Cube’s family: his parents,
Mr. Cuboid and Mrs. Prism, his
wife, Mrs. Sphere and their son,
the young Cone.
• Is this always possible? Why?
Which member of the family can
only get one pattern and which
one none?
