teaching+Geometry

Power Point Notes from Chapter 15.


This page contains great sites for hands on activities that will help you teach geometry. [|hands on geometry]

How to use literature to teach geometry.

[|Literature and geometry]

This site explains how to use all the concepts contained in the chapter 15 material.

[|Cylinders, scavenger hunt and other ideas]

The Origami Club website has literally 1000's of activites to try with students. It includes animations as well as directions!

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Here are resources that incorporate poetry and books to teach geometry.

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Tessalations Power Point: Really good ideas and interesting graphics.

I think that these activities are really great. I like how they suggest that you can link literature to Geometry especially with a Shel Silverstein poem. I think that tesselations would be really fun for kids to learn (and it obviously is a really great name) and they would have a lot of fun making their own and looking for them in real life. Scavenger hunts are also really great. I liked all these activities because they didn't seem like math, they felt more like fun which is not usually what I think of when I think of Geometry. I also think Oragami is great because kids are learning while having fun and they also get something to take home. -Tess

Tess - I see a cleverly written Geometry book in your future! :) Jan

The activities that are most interesting to me are the tessellation and Mobius Band lessons. Many ideas can be incorporated with these two exercises, including art, real life (bricks & architecture) and "magic". Students can get excited about geometry and take an active role in learning how everything fits together. -- Eric

Class, I wish I would have learned Geometry like the examples given! Making mobius bands, reading cleverly written literature, going on scavenger hunts, creating origami and tessellations! Creating lessons from the examples given will allow the opportunity to adapt and link Geometry to **//real life//** in many ways! - Jan

Class, There is a wide range of interest in geometry from my kindergarten daughter and 4th grade son as we worked through the wiki. Teaching sequencing through games, eyes filled with wonder at the Star Trek Mobius bands, triangles and angles while visions of gumdrops and toothpicks dance through their heads. It does not get any more creative than this until the endless options of literature come into play! From one that is excited to be a future teacher in this wonderful age of readily available options, Sarah

Class, That tessalations slideshow was amazing. It boggled my visual a bit! Very cool ideas for activities. Obviously, since I work as in a library, I was most interested and fascinated with the ideas for activities based on literature. I would have never considered the Shel Silverstein idea but I'm glad I know about it now. Geometry is tough for me. I don't "see" the images and have difficulty understanding the concepts. I think it I had more experience with these hands-on approaches, I would have been better off! Silena

Class, Geometry can either be interesting or really confusing for kids. The difference is in the presentation. I really liked the concept of introducing various shapes through literature. The excercises suggested were very practical and can help students identify shapes and patterns in everyday experiences, or in commonly viewed/manipulated objects.

Laura

Class, I had never thought of using a mobius band or origami to teach geometry. None of my children had ever heard of a mobius band before so I tried that lesson with them and they thought it was really cool. They have already constructed tetrahedrons, but have never heard of an astrolabe, so I'll try that one next. These are all really fun ways for kids to learn math. Lori

Class Geometry is one of the areas of math that is all around us. I think the best way to teach it is by using things that kids see in their everyday lives. If you can make it revelent to their lives kids will be interested and want to learn about it. The key to making it revelent is how you present the material. Ray

Hi all, The Tessalation ppt was most interesting to me because it brought back memories of when I was in 6th grade for the 2nd time...with the student I'm one-on-one with. Two years ago, he participated in a Tessalation project. I had never heard of it before but it totally made sense and the kids loved it. They had to take a full sheet of construction paper and make a Tessalation with ONE that was different. To see the wheels turning and the creativity that came out, was fabulous! It started the kids thinking about all the things they see daily that have to do with geometry. Tessalations are fun and a great geometric learning project. Raquel

Hello Class, I will admit to not always seeing activities that you can do that are math related for middle school students, but after veiwing these I have had my eyes opened. The tie ins to other core classes are obvious and makes me wish that my geometry teachers would have read these lessons. The tesselation and Oragami are something I would do just for fun. David

Hi everyone, I remember the toothpicks and marshmallow activity from Math Night and I am really excited to be able to apply it in class. I also think the drawing shapes exercise will be a great lesson for first or second grade. I also love the origami website - especially that the steps are animated! Stephanie

Class, I really enjoyed the activities presented above. Most interesting to me was the idea to give the students the blue-print of the school to discuss geometry. What a great real-life experience the students could relate to, and a great way to answer "When will I ever need to know this?" I also really enjoyed the literature and geometry link. The children's books listed are a great way to integrate literacy into math. Stories are fun for elementary students and the books listed, like Mouse Shapes, seem like a great way to spark their interest in geometry with hands-on activities to follow. Lindsay

Class, I love the idea of teaching math with literature I read an article on "The Patchwork Quilt". The idea was to talk about the shapes as you introduce the concept of geometry. Nikki