Comments on: Geometry – Day 69 – Introduction to Solid Shapes /2007/geometry-day-69-introduction-to-solid-shapes/ less helpful Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:02:58 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.2 By: dy/dan » Blog Archive » Thanks, Rich. /2007/geometry-day-69-introduction-to-solid-shapes/#comment-6703 Fri, 25 May 2007 00:47:02 +0000 /?p=218#comment-6703 […] ‘While back, Rich linked a 3D exercise which is pretty well appropriate for any age. You start with a paper circle and at the end, after a fair amount of collaboration, team-building, and discussion, you’ve got this sweet icosahedron. Along the way you review a couple hundred geometry concepts and their properties, tattooing down names, facts, and figures, anything that comes to your class’ collective mind, anything from “isosceles trapezoid” on to “snowcone” and “taco.” […]

]]> By: dan /2007/geometry-day-69-introduction-to-solid-shapes/#comment-4638 Sat, 12 May 2007 16:29:19 +0000 /?p=218#comment-4638 We just got into Platonic Solids last week so that’s going to happen soon. I just need to coax someone to pimp out his t.a. for light scissor duties.

]]> By: Rich /2007/geometry-day-69-introduction-to-solid-shapes/#comment-4627 Sat, 12 May 2007 13:38:24 +0000 /?p=218#comment-4627 Hey, just checking back – did you try doing this paper folding activity yet, or are you saving it for later?

]]> By: Rich /2007/geometry-day-69-introduction-to-solid-shapes/#comment-3360 Tue, 01 May 2007 15:57:11 +0000 /?p=218#comment-3360 I’d say that the toughest part is cutting out the darned circle. While it’s not required that it be a perfectly smooth circle, it sure makes things work better. At our school, students are allowed to possess scissors, which made that task go much faster. If I’d had to cut them all out myself for all of my sections, I would have not been terribly happy.

]]> By: dan /2007/geometry-day-69-introduction-to-solid-shapes/#comment-3261 Mon, 30 Apr 2007 06:01:05 +0000 /?p=218#comment-3261 Dang, this is great stuff. We just finished up testing, which means the heavy math lifting = over, so now seems like a great moment to appease my distractable kids who’ve been such troopers the last coupla days. Thanks, Rich.

]]> By: Rich /2007/geometry-day-69-introduction-to-solid-shapes/#comment-3236 Sun, 29 Apr 2007 18:58:52 +0000 /?p=218#comment-3236 Yeah, here you go – it starts on page 26 of this
PDF (actually, pages 26-30). Sorry, if I were at school with full Acrobat I could extract those specific pages for you. It even comes with a sample circle that you can print out (but I suspect that your Mac will allow you to draw circles too ;)

Errata: I just realized that in my original post I said “polyhedrons” when I should have said “polyhedra.” My bad.

Note: With this quasi-origami project, I’ve found that my ADD/ADHD students pay awesome attention, although it can turn into an obsession – one student apparently went home, proceeded to cut out and fold 20 circles for himself, and taped them into an icosahedron. He then hackeyed it around like a soccer ball until it fell apart, so he proceeded to make another 20 circles and fold them all again!

]]> By: dan /2007/geometry-day-69-introduction-to-solid-shapes/#comment-3067 Sat, 28 Apr 2007 22:38:15 +0000 /?p=218#comment-3067 Hey that sounds slick. I’m trying to imagine the progression. Do you know if the plans are available online?

]]> By: Rich /2007/geometry-day-69-introduction-to-solid-shapes/#comment-3063 Sat, 28 Apr 2007 21:03:48 +0000 /?p=218#comment-3063 I do a fairly cool activity with my middle schoolers, as we introduce polyhedrons (not as detailed as your students, but still dealing with prisms and pyramids/cones). It’d decidedly NOT technological, unless you consider a circle of paper to be high-tech. But with about a 7″ diameter circle of paper, you can fold it and discuss various polygons along the way, and wind up folding it to create a truncated tetrahedron. And then with a whole class of those (assuming that you have at least 20 students in the class), you can tape them all together and create an icosahedron. It’s pretty tactile activity, and it sure doesn’t lend itself to using a video projector, but for the most part my students always love it. And it makes a good model to keep pointing back at during subsequent lessons.

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