Using SCRATCH to teach algebra and geometry

his would be applicable for high school students who want to put down the textbooks for a while.

Is your face symmetrical? A Great Maths Lesson for your Students

This week we have been looking at Geometry, Symmetry and tessellation and as a part of this we got our kids to use their school photograph and see if their face actually was symmetrical.  Surprisingly to  nearly all of them realised that their face was far from symmetrical but had great fun doing this activity and learnt a great deal from it.

In doing this our student learnt about lines of symmetry and mirror imaging  We just used Microsoft Paint but any number of free programs such as Paint.net will achieve the same results.  Follow these simple steps to complete the task.

1: Load a photo of yourself in Paint ( we just used our school photos because they were a great portrait picture.  If you have none of these you may have to take some pics of your kids first.

2:  Click the select tool and select half the face the nose as this will be your line of symmetry.  You need to make a copy of your selection.

3:  Paste the copied selection back on top of the original photo.

4:  Click on the rotate button and select flip horizontal.

5:  Move the selected flip so that it aligns as best with the rest of the photo.  then ask yourself is your face really symmetrical.

As an extension task you might like to get you kids to use google images and find the lines of symmerty in objects such as flowers, fruit and shapes.  Discuss the lines of human symmetry and it would also be worth looking at the famous Da Vinci Picture - the art of man

Bring Geometry to life for your students with 3D Vinci

What is it: Having just finished teaching a session on Geometry with my kids I really wish I had seen this earlier.  3DVinci integrates all those boring geometric and mathematical concepts into Google Sketchup and allows them to build houses and other objects integrating scale, ratio and a range of geometric concepts., create printable nets to produce 3D shapes to display in the classroom.

How can i use this in the classroom: 3Dvinci is full of geometry lessons aimed at all year levels and has video tutorials for each session so there is no need to be a genius at Sketchup by any means. These videos show SketchUp in action. See how to tile, tessellate, divide a cube, build a prism, put together an icosahedron, and more.

Download a fun project each month that uses SketchUp to demonstrate a geometric concept. Printable PDF format, separate versions for teachers and students.

If you are new to SketchUp? This teacher page has easy steps to get started, and links to some free student activities including mosaics and puzzles.

3DVinci's Getting Started Guide (PDF) takes you through SketchUp's basic tools and features. Click either PC version or Mac version.

This one is definitely worth integrating into your maths sessions especially if you have kids in grade 3 and above and along the way you will see what else you can do with Google Sketchup too.  Let me know how you go.