I am starting a new tessellation project with my Geometry kiddies this week (honors) and next week (regular). Already it's looking like the tessellation of triangles and quadrilaterals (using rulers and protractors) is going to take a lot of time in class. But, I think it's still worth it, because it's bringing up a lot of good issues about how to construct parallel segments using alternate interior angles. Kids are feeling frustrated because they can visually see that subsequent lines and shapes are not where they need to be, when their angle measures are off by only 1 degree. In a period of working solidly for 40 minutes, most of my honors kids only tiled their triangle correctly 3 or 4 times. (They now need to finish that part for homework.)
When they eventually get to the
"fun" (ie. artsy) part of the project, I've prepared some examples of "fancy" tessellations (which I whipped up in MSPaint today! I love making vector drawings.) I'm looking forward to
that part of the project, of course.
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