Fun with Coordinate Transformations

I had a lovely time using my remixed version of Dan's snowflake prediction activity with my Geometry kids this week. It turned out to be a lot of fun for all the kids, and super educational! (We only cut out the first and third designs on the first page, plus the first design on the second page. For the rest, I had some pre-made cuts that I unraveled step-by-step in front of the class, once they've already made the predictions.) The faciliation turned out to be a good exercise in throwing more geometric vocabulary words at them (ie. "If you open it up here, where will be your line of symmetry?").

Lovely! :) It makes me so happy that it worked.

The other thing that I did with coordinate transformations this week that worked exactly the way I had envisioned was a partnered activity, where each partner has to describe orally how to transform existing polygons into their new images. They don't get to refer to the new coordinates OR to show the desired result to their partner, but they get to describe the CHANGE using words. It's a lead-in into how we specify transformations using numbers. It worked really well, and the kids loved it. :) By the time that they tried this activity, they hadn't seen at all how to specify the amount of translation, dilation, rotation yet. Many groups ended up figuring out the most efficient ways to describe the changes -- all by themselves!

Here are the files. Try them out!

(Notice that the back of each partner's worksheet is the space provided for sketching the solution to the other partner's verbal description.)



More goodness to come. (This week, I've been very busy! Giving tests in all classes, finishing up projects in 3 classes, and I went away to someone's lake house all of yesterday, during the Central American Independence Day holiday.)