|
Year 7 activity: Creating quadrilaterals and exploring their properties
In this activity, students create named quadrilaterals by inputting the co-ordinates of the four vertices and drawing conclusions about the angle and side properties of each quadrilateral they have created.
|
Key Stage 3 Key objectives: Shape Space and Measures
Geometrical reasoning: lines, angles and shapes
Begin to identify and use angle, side and symmetry properties of triangles and quadrilaterals; solve geometrical problem involving these properties, using step-by-step deduction and explaining reasoning with diagrams and text.
Measures and mensuration
Use units of measurement to solve problems involving length, area and angle.
|
Preparation:
|
Display the 2-D Shape Creation software using a data projector (and interactive whiteboard if available).
If laptops are available, students could use the software to create their shapes on-screen.
Opening screen: Blank coordinate grid.
Co-ordinate grid setup: Will show -10 to 10 in steps of 1 as default – no change needed here.
Additional resources: A3 laminated coordinate grids and pens, A4 paper copies of the co-ordinate grid for students to record their work.
|
(1).jpg)
|
Activity
|
Questions to ask students
|
|
With the students working in pairs, ask them to mark the coordinate (3, 8) on the grid. and discuss how they could create a rectangle that has one vertex (corner) at that point.
Encourage students to consider rectangles with sides that are not parallel to the axes.
|
How did you decide that your shape was a rectangle?
Which measurements would confirm this?
How can you use the grid lines to justify that your shape is a rectangle?
|
| Develop the task by asking students to create other quadrilaterals, such as squares, trapeziums, parallelograms, rhombuses, arrowheads and irregular quadrilaterals. |
For each of the shapes you create, what do you notice about the size of the angles? |
An alternative development would be to ask students to focus upon creating quadrilaterals with specific properties. For example, to support students to deduce the formula for the area of a parallelogram.
|
How many different parallelograms can you construct with a height of 3 units and area of 24 square units? |
Year 9 activity- Exploring offset squares
In this activity students begin away from the computer, and explore how to construct squares that are “offset” on a coordinate grid and calculate their resulting areas.
Students discuss how they are going to classify each of the squares and then create different squares using the 2-D Shape tool. The aim of the task is to find a connection between the shapes that are generated and their areas, leading to the derivation of Pythagoras theorem.
.gif)
|
Key Stage 3 Key objective:
Shape Space and Measures
Geometrical reasoning: lines, angles and shapes
Understand and apply Pythagoras theorem
|
|
Preparation:
Opening screen: Blank coordinate grid.
Co-ordinate grid setup: Will show -10 to 10 in steps of 1 as default – no change needed here.
Additional resources: A3 laminated coordinate grids and pens
|
|
Activity
|
Questions to ask students
|
|
Begin by using the software to take students’ suggestions for the construction of a square with a vertex at, say (6, 2).
Display an “offset” square on the screen.Invite students to the board to explain how they arrived at their answers, annotating the board as appropriate.
Reveal the value of the area. Ask students to create their own offset squares and predict the areas. Encourage students to record their results and conjecture a relationship between the way that the square was created and its resulting area.
Encourage students to classify each of the offset squares by considering the vector from vertex A to vertex B on the square. (The “along” and “up” numbers).
|
How could we generate a different square on the screen that also has a vertex at (6, 2)?
How could we work out the area of the square?
|
| Support students to develop a table of “along” and “up” numbers for different squares and the associated areas. |
How can we use the area of the square to calculate the length of the each side of the square? |
2-D Shapes Activities for Mathematics - MS Word
2-D Shapes Activities (MS Word)
2-D Shapes User Guide
Click here to access the comprehensive 2-D Shapes user guide.
2-D Shapes User Guide
2-D Shapes Tool Troubleshooting Guide
Occasionally it is frustrating when we cannot get ICT to do exactly what we want, so it is useful to know some of the constraints of this tool.
2-D Shapes Troubleshooting
|
