8P29 Post 8

This week in class was pretty busy because we were looking at geometry and spatial sense. The geometry unit is huge no matter what grade you teach, so there is always a lot of ground to tackle, and almost an overload of things you can do with the class to help them learn. Manipulatives such as geoboards, toothpicks and modelling clay, and even blocks that young children play with are all appropriate for geometry because it is such a visual math unit.

Thinking about geometry and spatial sense is something that students can incorporate into their daily lives because shapes are everywhere. It is useful to have an awareness of one’s surroundings and the objects in them. An activity we did in class this week that I really enjoyed was a “geometry scavenger hunt” where you needed to go around the school and find different 2D and 3D shapes. Most of what you’ll find is rectangular prisms, but I lucked out and somehow found a dodecahedron and heptagon too, which are not really shapes that you necessarily expect to find every day.

One of the things I was reflecting on most this week is taking an interdisciplinary approach to the classroom. There are only so many hours in the day and if you teach all subjects to your students rather than them being on a rotary, it can sometimes be tricky to find time to fit everything in. One way to address this issue is by incorporating different skills or subjects into class projects.

"Geometric Paper Ornaments." Retrieved from
goo.gl/dw7Fyb

Geometry lends itself to art tidily. Drawing is at its core putting together multiple smaller shapes to put together a cohesive picture. It’d be good to show your students, especially those who love art, that learning to represent 3D shapes can really step up their drawing game. Having that knowledge of perspective and spatial awareness really enhances the realism of a drawing. When learning about 3D shapes, you could give your students an activity where they have to create a perspective drawing of a room or a city street. Students then have to establish a vanishing point, and then create a series of shapes (primarily cubes and rectangular prisms most likely) oriented towards their perspective point. I loved making drawings like that when I was in art class, without ever realizing it was helping me practice representing 3D shapes.

Aude Sapere. "Two Point Perspective." Retrieved from
http://aude--sapere.deviantart.com/art/Two-Point-Perspective-City-337052681

Other art or craft-like projects that actually help students develop their geometry skills is through using nets to make shapes, such as animals, or by making geometric paper lanterns or ornaments with toothpick skeletons and tissue paper. Regardless, there are many ways to make geometry fun for students and keep them learning without them realizing it.

Geometry was never something I was really passionate about as a student; I always found rotation on a plane to be difficult for example. I also found it frustrating because in some geometry assignments, you’re marked on neatness, and I’m left-handed so my hand would smudge the pencil lead across the page and I would get marks off. But I think a way to get me more excited about the topic (and hopefully get the students excited too) is through some of the activities like the ones I just shared.