Tessellations: Geometry and Symmetry
Abstract
This lesson allows students to examine tessellations and their geometric properties. This activity
and discussions may be used to develop students' understanding of polygons and symmetry as well as
their ability to analyze patterns and explore the role of mathematics in nature and our culture.
Objectives
Upon completion of this lesson, students will:
- have been introduced to tessellations
- have learned about polygons
- have identified types of symmetry in tessellations
- examined tessellations in the world around them
Standards
The activities and discussions in this lesson address the following
NCTM standards:
Algebra
Understand patterns, relations, and functions
- represent, analyze, and generalize a variety of patterns with tables, graphs, words, and,
when possible, symbolic rules
Geometry
Apply transformations and use symmetry to analyze mathematical situations
- describe sizes, positions, and orientations of shapes under informal transformations such as
flips, turns, slides, and scaling
- examine the congruence, similarity, and line or rotational symmetry of objects using transformations
Use visualization, spatial reasoning, and geometric modeling to solve problems
- recognize and apply geometric ideas and relationships in areas outside the mathematics
classroom, such as art, science, and everyday life
Links to other standards.
Student Prerequisites
- Geometric: Students must be able to:
- Recognize regular polygons, such as triangles, rectangles and
hexagons
- Understand the difference between an edge and a corner
- Technological: Students must be able to:
- perform basic mouse manipulations such as point,
click and drag
- use a browser such as Netscape for experimenting with
the activities
Teacher Preparation
Students will need:
Key Terms
This lesson introduces students to the following terms through the included discussions:
Lesson Outline
- Focus and Review
Remind students what has been learned in previous lessons that will be pertinent to this lesson and/or
have them begin to think about the words and ideas of this lesson:
- Has anyone ever heard of M. C. Escher?
(Escher was a famous artist who enjoyed twisting perceptions of reality. He was responsible
for works such as Reptiles, Horseman and many more that incorporated the use ofd tessellations.)
- Objectives
Let the students know what it is they will be doing and learning today. Say something like
this:
- Today, class, we are going to learn about tellellations.
- We are going to use the computers to learn about tessellations, but please do not turn your
computers on until I ask you to. I want to show you a little about this activity first.
- Teacher Input
- Introduce the tessellation applet
in order to familiarize students to the idea of tessellations and how they developed.
- Guided Practice
- Have the students explore which regular polygons tessellate and why. Start them by examining
tessellations of regular polygons including number of sides and interior angle measurements by
using a data table. Encourage students to
determine a pattern among the polygons that they tessellate. Ask the students to predict which
regular polygons will and will not tessellate and why. Follow-up by having the students write a
concise definition for a regular polygon tessellation. Have them expand this definition to describe
a tessellation made from non-regular polygons.
- After the students have determined which regular polygons tessellate,
discuss the types of symmetry present in tessellations.
- Have the students build tessellations and identify the types of symmetry present. Give them a
table to record the basic shape used to tile and the types of symmetry present in the basic unit and
in the tessellated pattern.
- Discuss how angle measure, area, and perimeter apply to tessellations.
- Allow students time to practice their knowledge about tessellations. Have teams of students work
together. Instruct one student on the team to create a tessellation. Have that student describe the
tessellation to other students and see if the other students can recreate the tessellation without
looking. The students should formalize their terminology and describe the tessellation in terms of
angle measure, polygon shape, symmetry, area and perimeter.
- Lead a discussion about tessellations in the world.
Ask students to identify tessellations that they see in their daily lives and in nature.
- Discuss the ways that we perceive patterns. Lead a discussion about
optical illusions to demonstrate how we perceive
patterns. Also discuss the use of color in tessellations.
Suggest that the students change the colors in their tessellations to see what effect that has
on how they perceive the pattern. They may want to record their observations in a journal.
- Independent Practice
- Ask the students to use the tessellation activity
to build tessellations of patterns they see in art and nature. You may also ask students to stretch
the regular polygons into the letters of the alphabet or the letters of their name and tessellate the
pattern. Have them record which polygon is best used to shape each letter. Also have them record what
type of symmetries are present in each tessellation.
- Closure
- You may wish to bring the class back together for a discussion of the findings.
Once the students have been allowed to share what they found, summarize the results of
the lesson.
Alternate Outlines
This lesson can be rearranged in several ways. Here is an example of
a shorter version:
- The lesson can begin by introducing the
tessellation applet
to introduce students to the idea of tessellations and how they developed.
- Discuss the types of symmetry
present in tessellations.
- Have the students build tessellations and identify the types of symmetry present. Give them a table
to record the basic shape used to tile and the types of symmetry present in the
basic unit and in the
tessellated pattern.
Suggested Follow-Up
After these discussions and activity, the students should have practiced their ability to recognize
symmetry in plane figures. Students can gain a deeper understanding of other pr
inciples of geometry
by exploring tessellations in the Geometry Lesson.
The tessellation
activity could also be used to explore spatial visualization and pattern recogni
tion with the
Visual Pattern Lesson.
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