Beacon Lesson Plan Library
Geometry: Tessellations
Kathy Peters
Bay District Schools
Description
Students apply knowledge of reflections, rotations, and translations in creating a tessellation.
Objectives
The student understands the concepts of spatial relationships, symmetry, reflections, congruency, and similarity.
The student predicts, illustrates, and verifies which figures could result from a flip, slide, or turn of a given figure.
Materials
-Software such as TesselMania! Deluxe CD
-Macintosh Computer, System 7.1 or later
-Microsoft Windows, 486 or higher
Preparations
1. Instructor should be fully familiar and comfortable with the software, -TesselMania.-
2. Copy student handouts that accompany Lessons 1,2,3 of software package materials.
3. Prepare assessment tool #2.
Procedures
1. Introduce and review geometric terms: plane figures, polygons, symmetry, rotations, translations, and glide reflections.
2. Introduce tessellations to the entire class using a program like -TesselMania!- computer program. Through the on-line -About Tessellations- book, students will be given a solid background in tessellations and how to use the -TesselMania! Deluxe CD-.
3. Complete Lessons 1, 2, and 3 outlined in the teacher`s guide of TesselMania. Student handouts are in the back of the manual. These lessons are teacher-directed and are independent of the computer. The purpose of the lessons is to give the students hands-on experiences with translations, midpoint and vertex rotations, and glide reflections.
4. Have students work through each of the options of the computer program: solving tessellation puzzles, creating new tessellations, and making a project or gift from a tessellation.
5. Complete assessment activities.
Assessments
In student product look for the following characteristics of geometric figures: symmetry, congruence, reflections, rotations, and translations.
Also check for the use of flips, slides, and turns (reflections, translations, and rotations.)
Extensions
If you do not have the software -TesselMania- you might go to the website in the weblink or search for other sites that allow your students opportunities to build their own tessellations.
Web Links
Web supplement for Geometry: Tessellations Tessellations Tutorials
|