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Lesson 7 - Communicating about Geometrical Patterns

 

To encourage students to have fun on the Web while learning about Communicating about Geometrical Patterns, here are some games and interactive activities they can do on their own or in pairs.

Goal

Describe designs in terms of congruent, translated, rotated, and reflected images.

Builds Upon

Student Book pages 250-252

Instructions for Use

Wallpaper Patterns lets students design geometrical patterns using translated, rotated, and reflected images.

To use Wallpaper Patterns, click the "Original Image" button. Select a polygon from the radio buttons to the left of the workspace. Drag the coloured dots in the workspace to create a design. Try all the radio buttons to create designs that reflect, rotation and translate the image.

 

Interactive Snowflake Designer prompts students to design geometrical patterns.

To use Interactive Snowflake Designer, choose the size of scissors from the menu. Move the mouse over the white triangle and start creating the design. Notice that the results of the design on the triangle are reproduced on the hexagon.

Copy the design to the clipboard to save it, or click the "Reset" button to make another design. Try to reproduce the computer-generated snowflake with paper and scissors.

 

Snowflake Designer gives students practice designing geometrical patterns.

To use Snowflake Designer, move the mouse over the workspace to draw a design. Click on any key to clear the design and begin a new one.

 

Tile Generator prompts students to extend geometric patterns.

To use Tile Generator, click the "Execute" button to generate a tiled pattern. To randomly change the colour of the tile pattern, click the "Recolorize" button. Experiment with the symmetry, grid, and number of loops by clicking on the pull-down menus. After each choice, click the "Execute" button to generate a new tiled pattern.