The purpose of this activity is to engage students in thinking about the features and differences of regular polygons.
A printable PDF with suitable shapes is provided with this activity.
This activity assumes the students have experience in the following areas:
The problem is sufficiently open ended to allow the students freedom of choice in their approach. It may be scaffolded with guidance that leads to a solution, and/or the students might be given the opportunity to solve the problem independently.
The example responses at the end of the resource give an indication of the kind of response to expect from students who approach the problem in particular ways.
Jess thinks that since hexagons and octagons look the same, they should have the same name.
Find as many ways as you can to show Jess that they are different.
Note to teacher: This activity assumes the students are supplied with regular hexagons and regular octagons of similar width and area.
The following prompts illustrate how this activity can be structured around the phases of the Mathematics Investigation Cycle.
Introduce the problem. Allow ākonga time to read it and discuss in pairs or small groups.
Discuss ideas about how to solve the problem. Emphasise that for now you want ākonga to say how they would solve the problem, not to actually solve it.
Allow ākonga time to work through their strategy and find a solution to the problem.
Allow ākonga time to check their answers and then either have them pair share with other groups or ask for volunteers to share their solution with the class.
The student identifies features and properties of the prototypical hexagon and octagon. They establish the features and properties that are the same for both shapes and those that are different.
Click on the image to enlarge it. Click again to close.
The student identifies differences between the prototypical hexagon and octagon. They attend to properties, namely the number of sides and the ‘sharpness’ of angles at the corners.
Printed from https://nzmaths.co.nz/resource/different-names-different-shapes at 7:57pm on the 3rd May 2024