Experiences

Regular polygons

Agnieszka Wojtas

Poland

Primary school

Maths

Teaching in class

Direct

Teaching geometry always makes a huge problem, probably due to the fact that teachers themselves have problems with "geometrical seeing ", and a good understanding of the subject requires many hours of work with children, for what teacher usually does not have time.

Due to the fact I am working in a private school with increased number of hours of math I use different kinds of methods which purpose is to teach the child to "see".
I start many topics related to geometry with the question: "WHAT CAN YOU SEE?"
It is one of the fundamental questions, to which I expect an answer because this can determine what the student knows about the vocabulary and what particular geometric element for him/her is.

The topic of regular polygons – I teach the understanding of these concept for 3 years at several stages.

It appears to be simple, but correct understanding of the meaning of the concept “regular” is difficult.
I begin to teach the he concept of regularity in the 4th grade when student gets familiar with basic blocks. I always start with the Platonic and Archimedean solids. The aim of the course is to teach to "see" and "understand" the solid, mainly its naming. I begin the classes with working with Poly Pro programme, where I ask students to find the football. As we know, football is icosahedron. During the search, the students view dozens of solids. They watch, observe and draw conclusions.

Preparing the presentation finishes the first stage of the game with solids and the regularity.

In 5th grade we work with students on tessellation. It's a very long and difficult topic. Students learn the structure of regular polygons learn about their features in the CABRI programme. They create a presentation on the works of Maurits Escher.

Students cut out coloured polygons and independently prepare large banners with tessellation in A2 format.
It enables to master the following concepts: the tessellation tip, classic Archimedean tessellation, properties of regular polygons and their angles, perigon - 360 degrees.

It's a long and tedious work for students, but the end result is the work on their own –non-geometrical tessellation. And it is a great satisfaction for students.