The purpose of sketching the planter is to have the students become familiar with what they are going to build. This will give the teacher the opportunity to have the students measure the overall dimensions of the planter, (length, width, height), and provide an initial evaluation of the students overall measurement ability. While the students are drawing, the teacher can circulate, check the measurements, and have a good idea of the students' ability to measure. This will be important because the teacher will not want to group students together who have trouble measuring for this project.

If the class is working on scale drawings, this would be an excellent activity to have the students draw the planter to scale. The concepts and techniques of two dimensional and three dimensional drawings should also be discussed.