As we continued to bring together all we know about geometry we were able to really showcase our learning and our hard work! Our 3D shapes inspired the foundation of an important message and a cool math bulletin board!
Our right angle math exploration in grade 3 lead to many ways of showing off our math angle tools (pieces of bristol boarded cut into small rectangles and pieces of acetate). I let the students decide how they wanted to complete their master pieces. As we manipulated our right angles new artistic ways of using them caught our attention...(so we just went with it).
Why Blend in When You Were Born (Built) to Stand Out!
Our right angle math exploration in grade 3 lead to many ways of showing off our math angle tools (pieces of bristol boarded cut into small rectangles and pieces of acetate). I let the students decide how they wanted to complete their master pieces. As we manipulated our right angles new artistic ways of using them caught our attention...(so we just went with it).
Time to search out all of those acetates you thought you would never use again when... (would you believe I can't even remember what they are called)...oh ya overheads... when overheads became obsolete!
A wonderful idea popped into my head, (at least I thought it was pretty cool), as I was exploring new ways to teach right angles and searching for ways the students could check angles to make sure they were actually right angles. I cut a piece of acetate for every student so that they had their own "right angle checker". They simple aline the acetate's inside corner to the angle's inside corner and lineup side to side to see if the other side of the angle shows that it's equal to the acetate (a right angle), smaller than a right angle or larger than a right angle. I will try to remember to post a picture on another day!
Recently we realized that our "right angle checker" would also be a handy tool for checking out congruent shapes. We simply use a washable marker to trace the shape so that we can rotate it, slide it and reflect it onto the other shapes to see if they are congruent. A clear, plastic, ziplock bag also does the tick! If you were really on your toes you may have realized a third use for the acetate as I described the previous one...Transformational Geometry! Rotations! Translations (slides)! Reflections! More on that later!
