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It came to my attention that for the Grade 7 unit on geometry there is an exceptionally large amount of material that is most likely communicated in the form of definitions. Definitions can be a bit tedious to commit to memory so I had the students try an activity that allowed them to practically apply shapes and symbols that represent acute angles and rhombi etc. with a realized concept of the definition.
Procedure
Have the enriched students, (those who are always finished early with the eternal question, "What can I do next?") start making and labeling all the shapes and diagrams that are related to points, obtuse angles, rays, polygons, etc. A crew of making and labeling all the shapes and diagrams that are related to points, obtuse angles, rays, polygons, etc. A crew of about five to seven keeners can make diagrams a little bit faster then you can keep track of what has and hasnāt been made.
The next day each student gets one diagram and is allowed to show absolutely no one. They fasten this diagram to the back of the person in front of them. That way everyone has a diagram fastened to their back and everybody knows what it is except the person wearing it.
Everybody has about four minutes to find out whether they are an isosceles triangle or an irregular octagon (or whatever). The real chestnut here was that they could only figure out through deductive reasoning. They could only ask each other the questions that were listed on the over-head. Once they had figured out their shape they would come to me with their educated guess. Stress that ćI donāt knowä is not an answer to a question. The person you ask has to say definitely yes or no. Within about five minutes everybody figured out what shapes they were dealing with. The following questions show a good cross section of what they were allowed to ask.
- Do I have 1 point?
- Do I have 2 points?
- Do I have 1 angle?
- Do I have 2 angles?
- Do I have seven " "?
- Do I have eight " "?
- Do I have 1 side?
- Do I have 2 sides?
- Are any of my sides parallel?
- Are any of my angles more than 90o?
- Are any of my angles less than 90o?
- Are any of my lines identical in length?
- Are any of my angles identical?
- Are all of my angles identical?
- Are all of my lines identical?
- Are all of my lines parallel?
Just to put a mildly competitive edge on it, students got to put a check on someoneās diagram every time they answered one of their questions. Some people ended up asking all the questions. A few of them needed only five or less.
All in all, it was a fun twist on mundane material. Everybody got to visualize 28 different definitions and they all got to thoroughly know at least one definition within a relatively short time period.
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