Are you a teacher looking for ways to teach your students lesson topics on scale drawing, proportions, and ratios in a variety of lively and interesting ways? Are you a parent looking for supplementary things to do to reinforce what your child is learning at school, or offer them educational but fun things to do in the summer or over a break?
The following engaging scale drawing activities will help middle school math learners gain knowledge about proportions and ratios and excel in scale drawing through engaging exercises and projects that are fun for students!
1. Video introduction to scale drawing
To start off, here's a video that's really easy to understand and explains basic knowledge of scale drawings and mathematical relationships. It's so easily accessible that most middle school students would be able to follow it in a whole class lesson.
Learn more: Eric Buffington
2. Teach How to Measure Landmarks
Here's another video (with music, too!) that teaches students how to come up with proportions to calculate the true size of different things in a campground, such as a lake or a totem pole! Then it explores and offers examples of how some art uses scale to create impressively huge pieces!
Learn more: Wetrodent
3. Teach Scale Drawing Using Grids
This classic BrainPOP video would be a great one to watch before you get your students started with their own scale drawings! It explains exactly how to scale up or scale down an image using a larger grid of a smaller one. Help Tim and Moby finish their self-portrait! So easy that it would even make a great activity for subs.
Learn more: Marlon Nino-Espino
4. In-depth Lesson on Ratio and Proportion
This website is a collection of four videos designed to explore different aspects of scale drawings, ratios, and proportions. Each contains a pretty basic lesson that can connect back to earlier lessons! Students could use these to refer to on their own if they need a refresher or to answer review questions! The videos offer clear and concise instruction that will help reinforce student understanding.
Learn more: Virtual Nerd
5. Pop-up Quiz
A great "check-in" activity in class after students learn what scale drawings are. This activity quizzes kids with review questions on their understanding of scale factor as they help a student draw a floor plan of his classroom! This would be a great "check for understanding" to see how much of these concepts students have absorbed.
Learn more: Open-up Resources
6. Scale Drawing of Geometrical Figures
This simple lesson introduces the concept of proportion to students using scale drawings of geometrical figures. It's a great tool to help direct students to acquire a basic understanding of these geometry principles.
Learn more: Mrs. E Teaches Math
7. Comic Strip Drawing
For kids who "can't draw"... Show them a way to use scale to create art with this cute activity! This activity takes smaller comic strips and requires students to draw them on a larger scale. It's super fun and gets middle school students excited about proportions (because there are kid-friendly comics involved!) This coloring activity could turn into some lovely classroom decor!
Learn more: Mrs. E Teaches Math
8. Beginner-Friendly Step-by-Step Guide
Here's another follow-up lesson that uses a comic strip image to help students learn about scale and proportion—this one has a simple step-by-step guide for teachers (or whoever is assisting students,) too!
Learn more: Math-n-spire
9. Incorporate Sports Themes!
For students who are into sports, this next one will be fun! Students are asked to calculate the actual dimensions in the size of a basketball court based on a scaled drawing... This kind of real-life application helps students understand how math is relevant to their world!
Learn more: il Classroom
10. Add a History Angle!
As an added benefit, this lesson utilizes an art history angle, as it uses the work of Piet Mondrian to get kids interested in both art and math by recreating the work Composition A using its actual measurements on a smaller scale. Colorful, educational, and fun!
Learn more: Bits and Pieces of Middle School
11. Scale Draw Everyday Objects
This one is sure to catch kids' attention because it involves actual objects—snacks and candy, which middle schoolers love and can't resist! Students can scale their favorite food wrappers up or down! This could be really fun around a holiday if you wanted to have a party as a treat and let kids eat the snacks and candy they are scaling!
Learn more: Fast Times of a Middle School Math Teacher
12. Learn Basic Geometry
This lesson teaches students to use different colors to help them identify the missing side of a rotated congruent triangle, and would be a great lesson to connect some of the more artistic or creative ones in this collection by touching on the "real math" of geometric figures.
Learn more: Equation Freak
13. Learn Scale Factor
This video does a great job of explaining scale factor using appealing actual objects like cars, paintings, dog houses, and more! This could really help students who needed a review after learning about scale and congruency.
Learn more: Edkolu
14. Play "Interior Decorator"
This project uses a hands-on approach by including the actual lengths of real materials to help students play "interior decorator" for a dream house, and you could even add a layer to it by having students calculate the total cost of their room design on a separate piece of paper!
Learn more: Everybody is a Genius
15. Incorporate Art Techniques!
For a challenge, you could have students take on a more aesthetic angle and create truly beautiful works of art using some of the scaling skills they've learned while practicing the drawing process!
Learn more: Art with Trista
16. Group Puzzle
For more of a collaborative approach to understanding the concept of scale, this activity takes a well-known work of art and divides it into squares. Students are only responsible for redrawing one square on a piece of paper, and as they find where their square belongs in the larger piece, the work of art comes together like a group puzzle!
Learn more: Fast Times of a Middle School Math Teacher
17. Scale Draw an Aircraft
Here's a really interesting project that would pair well with a field trip to an Air and Space Museum, or with participation in The Starbase Youth Program, if it is accessible to you! (https://dodstarbase.org/) Students use scale measurements to draw an F-16 to scale and then decorate it however they want!
Learn more: For Love of Learning
18. Learn About Proportions
This is a really quick and simple video that explains proportional relationships and their purpose—to shrink the scale of larger things down so they can be worked with!
Learn more: Mrs. Schmidt's 7th Grade Math Tutoring
19. Incorporate Social Studies
This mapping activity is meant to pair with a study of Lewis and Clark in a history or social studies class, but it could be modified for any class that has outdoor access to a park, garden, playground, or really any outside area! Students would turn a real space, filled with three-dimensional objects, into a map of the area!
Learn more: Our Journey Westward
20. Create Scale Models of Animals
How big is big? This more complex project provides a challenge for students by asking groups to create models of enormous animals. It would make a great culminating project to a unit on scale drawings!
Learn more: California Academy of Sciences
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