Week 8 Reflection

This week the topic we focused on was Geometry, which chapters 15 and 16 of our textbook covered. In class we looked more closely at 2-Dimensional shapes, 3-Dimensional shapes, and symmetry. We got to play around with a lot of manipulatives, activities, and apps that furthered our understanding of geometry.

One of the things that I found the most interesting regarding 2-D geometric shapes were tangrams. Tangrams are created by dissecting a square into 7 smaller shapes. These 7 shapes can then be used to either recreate the square or a variety of different shapes. Below is an example of a tangram that we worked on in class:

Woolley, E. © 2015

I found tangrams to be really fun and interesting because we were presented with the 7 shapes (2 large triangles, 1 medium triangle, 2 small triangles, a small square, and a small parallelogram) and had to try and create the bigger square. I found it rather challenging trying to fit all these pieces together, but I thought it was an interesting concept, and really demonstrated how geometric shapes can make other shapes.

We also talked about 3-D geometric shapes. This was a fun topic because of the manipulatives we got to play with. We talked about the skeleton of 3D shapes and then we used clay and toothpicks to construct these skeletons. I made a cube, a triangle-based prism, and a square-based prism:

Woolley, E. © 2015

This was a great activity for students to get to see all sides of a 3D shape, and be able to count the edges (counting toothpicks) and vertices (count the red clay). I plan to use this activity in my class, because its a good hands on activity. We also discussed geometric nets, which we could build if we had more class time, and face maps (draw out all the faces of a 3-D shapes. i.e. 6 squares for a cube). These two manipulatives are a good way to show students which 2D shapes make up these 3D shapes. 

We talked about symmetry and the two types of symmetry in geometry: reflective symmetry and rotational symmetry. Reflective symmetry when a shape mirrors its other half, and rotational symmetry is when you turn the shape over itself to see if it is symmetric. We went over plane Symmetry - when one half of a 3D shape reflects onto the other half across a plane. A fun manipulative we used to draw symmetrical shapes was a mira, which mirrors an image so a student can trace it to create a symmetrical shape. Below is a picture of a mira reflecting the other half of the shape:

Woolley, E. © 2015

We were shown various apps this week, but the one I like best was called Symmetry artist. I played around with it after class, because it was a lot of fun. The way it works is you draw on one side of the line of symmetry and the app mirrors your drawing to create a symmetric shape. It is a good example of reflective symmetry because it mirrors the shape that you draw as you are drawing it. This app is fun because you can draw anything (as long as it fits on the drawing area) and you can add details like colour. I could use this as an activity for students to draw their own symmetric shapes by adding lots of detail and using their imaginations.

One of the sites that I explored this week explored the properties of shapes. This site would be good for my students to better understand geometry and gives good examples for creating and constructing shapes on an online sketchpad. I would consider using this as a manipulative for my students because it is a fun, interactive activity to get students to create shapes. It is very in depth with the instructions for creating shapes online, but I would definitely go over how to create shapes on this site with my students so they would know what to do.

Finally, we looked at a commercial for an app called Osmo. It is an interactive app for the iPad that also lets children play with physical manipulatives to better their problem-solving skills: