Diecutting For Classrooms
From the points of view of cost, speed, convenience, and – most of all – safety, using die-cut paper in the classroom excel for student cut-out projects.
The costs are concentrated – just once - in the design and preparation of a given product rather than in equipment for all students. Classroom time is too valuable to use waiting for the least adept in the class to remove excess from a printed design. The convenience is very important for students, who gain a sense of being treated to a properly prepared lesson. For the teacher, the relief from purchasing, passing out, keeping track of, collecting, and securely storing cutting tools cannot be overestimated. there being no necessity for the introduction of cutting tools in the classroom is clearly a major safety factor.
Constructions made of paper, even those as seemingly complex as a three dimensional periodic table, are a good example. Paper constructions printed and shipped flat are low cost, and, properly designed, become sturdy three-dimensional objects with multiple applications.
there are three good examples in the Alexander Arrangement line; a larger unit for classroom display – one laminated print die cut for a model and another for a wall chart, a set of periodic tables for interactive student entry (of data, images, and whatever creative thoughts a student might have) die cut for later separation from the surrounding substrate and assembly, and the DeskTopper, a colorful, data filled, card stock, personal size chart for the lesson before that one which introduces the flat periodic table of chemical elements, and which, when completed in 3-D, will stay with the student forever.
DeskToppers, for instance, are pre-cut on a single sheet, no instructions, blades, or scissors needed for removal of the three segments. (One section, formed into a tube, is like the very first periodic table, by de Chancourtois, that preceded Mendeleev’s flat table by 10 years. This tube makes up the s- and p-blocks.)
To complete assembly, some tools are needed; glue, staples, or tape, to make teardrop shapes out of the two remaining segments – d-block and f-block – which, hand held, can be studied independently. Tabs into slots provide all other connections.
Die cut ease of separation and construction permits a lesson as vital as this transition from prior knowledge to acceptance of the necessity for a flat Periodic Table to become a fun event for students, and a rewarding one for the teacher, who has been able to employ class time for more lesson with less fussin’.
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