Today's topic is the wonderful world of geometry and spatial reasoning. For some of us older folks, the most fun we've ever had developing our spatial sense came outside the classroom while playing Tetris [thanks (original) Nintendo]. The idea was to manipulate the shapes and fit them together to create as many lines as possible. Simple right? Tetris did for spatial sense what Pong did for hand-eye coordination. It even had the ability to self-regulate it's difficulty level. The better you became, the faster the pieces dropped. Maybe there were some rogue teachers who assigned Tetris as homework back in the day but none of them taught me. For me, unfortunately the classroom couldn't compare to Tetris in developing my appreciation or ability to manipulate geometric shapes for a specified purpose. Maybe in today's technology enhanced classroom things would be different. For those of us who were fortunate enough to experience Tetris and for those who weren't, let's all take a moment to reflect since we're all pros at reflecting by now:
Was Tetris really just the ultimate manipulative? This game perfectly exemplifies one of the big ideas we learned about geometry and spatial sense in class: there needs to be some kind of interaction between the student and the item. If you want to get better at riding a bike, you ride a bike. If you want to get better at catching a ball, you play catch. So if one wants to develop a better spatial sense, then it's probably a good idea to interact with items that require and develop a spatial sense. With this idea in mind, enter the world's second (or first, depending on who you talk to) greatest contribution to the development of one's geometric and spatial sense....no not the guinea pig, the rubic's cube!
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| Markham, Tom. (2010). Guinea Pig on Rubic Cube [Online Image]. Retrieved from: flickr.com |
Oh yea, and then there are these strikingly less fun, yet equally educational resources......
......Don't tell me you didn't recognize the Tetris shapes built with the pink blocks.
The point is, trying to teach and learn about geometry and spatial reasoning without the use of manipulatives is like trying to eat jello through your nose. Make no mistake about it, it's doable but it's not going to be pleasant. These are a great way to meet the curriculum expectations that include constructing shapes and geometric figures.
Moving swiftly onward, one of the strengths of this topic is its applicability to every day life. This topic lends itself to student relevance if they've ever thrown a baseball or kicked a soccer ball. It becomes real for them if they've ever eaten an ice cream cone or if they've ever seen common traffic signs like a stop sign. As a text to self connection, you could ask students to take digital pictures of real world geometric applications and create some kind of collage containing their discoveries. This could work to help meet the curriculum expectation of identifying and describing geometric figures. In a great 'text to world' connection, students could be given the opportunity to explore the internet for prominent architectural designs and be asked to create their own ancient architectural masterpiece complete with story of the time period it was created, purpose it served and the society that it belonged to. I believe that the more you can make a topic relevant to your students, the battle is already half won because if you increase their caring, students will be more receptive to your sharing.
Stay spatial, mathletes.
Great post this week Adam. I really liked how you didn't just focus on geometry and spatial expressions within the classroom. The real life applications of Tetris or the Rubics will engage students right away because of the relationship they may have with these games. Your "text to World" connection is also a great concept that teachers can use to inform students on their day to day interactions with geometric shapes. The relevancy that you provided for students can certainly help you make them more engaged in the math topic.
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