The Home Stretch: Essays, Table-top Models and Presentations!

By now you should have uploaded your city using Buzzsaw and entered the team information, city inventory and self-assessment on the teacher portal (if you’re having trouble, please email me or Olivia). Now you’re starting on the essay and table-top model. There are a few things you should know…

Essay and City Narrative

While Microsoft Word might have a spell checker, the more common errors are grammatical and homonym errors. Make sure you’re using the right “your”, their/there, etc.

If you’re having problems coming up with a good outline for the paper go back to the problem statements and look at the outline provided on pages 16-17 of the handbook.

Again, just like the SimCity model, review the essay and city narrative rubrics and then go over your work. Have the mentors run through the rubric with the students and point out anything that is missing.

Models and Oral Presentation

The model dimensions are located in the handbook – make sure you don’t have anything hanging off your model that is outside of the set dimensions. And that any moving part also stays within the box.

Likewise, start with determining your scale (1″ = 20′), and determine how large your physical model represents; at 1″ = 20′, a 50″x25″ base represents an area of 1000′ by 500′. Lets take a look at average building sizes in Las Vegas…

2000′ Sq Ft Home: 65′x90′ (lot size)
Convenience Store:  40′x65′ *
Middle School: 630′x340′ (building only, no playground)

Grocery Store: 275′x250′ *
Home Improvement Store: 450′x250′ *
Super Walmart: 600′x450′ *

* Building only, parking lot not included

Doubling that to 1″ = 40′ is 2000′ by 1000′, so you could fit about 400 2000 sq ft houses, or 200 houses and a grocery store and a parking lot. Figuring out how large things are is key to building your model at the correct scale.

And remember, practice, practice, practice those oral presentations! There is no substitute for getting up in front of an audience of 4-5 people and having them give you recommendations on the presentation.