Geometry Manipulatives

Assignment: Geometry Manipulatives

Jennifer Mello / Math 157 / 04/13/2014

Activity: What’s so special about Triangles, Anyway?

With this activity Student’s will be able to explore different ways of building different shapes from triangles. They will also investigate the basic properties of triangles and their relationship with the other basic geometric shapes. To begin this activity we would first start off by reviewing triangles and asking questions like; what is a triangle? How can we classify triangles by their sides and angles?

Materials that will be needed for this activity will be an activity sheet with two different triangles on it, Scissors, Glue, Masking Tape, Duplicated examples of a square, a triangle, and a parallelogram, how do you build triangles? Activity sheet, Triangular shapes with different sizes, pattern blocks, and patch tool.

So after reviewing triangles, hand out the Just Two Triangles Activity Sheet and have the students cut out the shapes from the activity sheet. Then use the models of the square, triangle, and parallelogram and ask the students to glue the shapes into new shapes on the activity sheet. Afterwards have a class discussion about what was one important thing, their likes and differences, and where could it be seen in the classroom, at home, on the playground.

Distribute the pattern blocks and group the students into two to four students, letting the students explore the different ways to make triangles. The patch tool will also suffice for the pattern blocks. Hand out the How Do You Build Triangles? Activity sheet, while keeping them into pairs or groups and giving them directions and see how they build their own triangle, so on and so forth. Lastly, have students compare their drawings with their classmates and have a discussion about what is different about each other’s drawings.

The National Council of Teacher of Mathematics Standards and Expectations of the students would be able to identify,...