Students test math skills to build tiny Yellowknife

The hardest assignments when you’re building a miniature Yellowknife? The legislature and Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre.

Those are “the most difficult out of all the buildings, structurally,” explained student Paige Tait – a member of an École St Patrick High School class tasked with recreating the territorial capital in miniature.

The “tiny Yellowknife” project sees every Grade 9 math student at the school help build a 1:200 model of the city’s downtown as part of their unit on proportional reasoning.

“Students were able to recreate different objects – in this case, the buildings – by using a certain scale,” said teacher John Roche. “In this case, we use a scale of one to 200, so every single building here should be a 200th the size of the actual building.”

Roche said they did this by either using Google Maps or visiting and taking photos of each side of their buildings, then drawing plans and eventually building models.

To recreate the legislature, Roche said, Tait and fellow student Izabelle Pike had trouble photographing each side of the building due to trees being in the way.

“We actually went into the legislative building and we asked if they had anything that could help us,” explained Pike. “They gave us a floor plan that was scaled down by 250 and we needed our building to be scaled down to one to 200.”

She said they measured the floor plans they were given and multiplied everything by 1.25 to get the measurements for their model.

“I guess we learned more about architecture in a way, and I know I definitely learned more about the shape of the legislative building,” said Pike.

“Architecture takes time and patience,” said another student, Raychelle Apilan-Tambus, who helped to tackle the model of the territorial museum.

Asked if the project sparked an interest in architecture, the group unanimously agreed: It did not.

Roche said the board that acts as the base for the model was passed down from last year’s project. The grid drawn onto it helped the students figure out where to place buildings in relation to each other.

The painted roads – a new addition to this year – helped with the aesthetics and with building placement, Roche said.

He explained that in class, students regularly get to participate in group work but because each building was so different, students had to be more independent.

“Just the fact that they weren’t able to support one another, and they were all on their own with their building – with only their teacher’s help – I think that was probably the most challenging thing,” said Roche.

That’s not to say the tiny city didn’t ultimately come together.

“The projects this year look just as good – if not better – than last year,” said Roche.

“They all look really good,” said Tait. “I can recognize all the buildings for what they are.”