Avon Branch
Branch Contact
Forthcoming Meetings
Dates will appear here.
Venue
All meetings will be held in Room 313, University of Bristol, Graduate School of Education, 35 Berkeley Square, Clifton, BS8 1JA
Time
6.00 - 7.30 • Cost £1 - All welcome
In the meantime...
In‘creasing’ participation in creative geometry
Despite the growth of ICT based active geometry packages, at a recent Avon branch meeting we rediscovered a great way of exploring geometry in the classroom.
The activity is based on a fringe event from ATM‘s 2006 annual conference entitled ‘without...scissors and glue’ and is one of a number Jan Winter brought back from annual Conference for Avon Branch members to work on.
Origami shapes, which Jan told us were made out of whole pieces of A4, were placed on the tables around the room. They got our attention straight away because they were bright, tactile and had interesting challenges written on the front of them, like the ones below. Some members of the group quickly set about trying to reproduce the shapes using their own A4 while others preferred to unravel the pre-made ones stage-by-stage perhaps sketching, labelling and analysing angles and lengths resulting from the folds as they went.
I tried this activity at Maths Club when I got back to school and the students were engaged and interested from the outset. The students were asked why the shapes were what we had labelled them as and, as soon as we had overcome the hurdle of ‘well, it‘s just obvious’ they all made great inroads in their own particular level of investigation. For example, some of the higher ability students focused on how to prove the nature of the shapes by exploiting algebraic techniques such as labelling identical sides, simplifying expressions and identifying recognisable angles and similar triangles. Some found themselves exploring areas of mathematics that were new to them, such as the Year 7 students beginning to explore Pythagoras‘ Theorem. This was also, however, a great activity for low ability students as they could focus on the visual and practical sides of making the shapes as well as examining geometric properties such as the lines of symmetry. There was a real feeling that the conversations were not over by the end of the session; lots of shapes were taken away.
You are invited to work on the task yourself...but you can find this text together with instructions on how to make an equilateral triangle and a six point star below.
Instructions on how to make an equilateral triangle and a six point star
By Ellen Pearson and Julian Brown
Previous Meetings
16 Jun 2010
All the best ideas from 2010 ATM Conference
18 Nov 2009
Rich Tasks and Ways of Working at Key Stage 4 - Alf Coles and Ruth Open
