Mirror, Mirror
Geometry/Spatial Sense
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Objective
Students will use spatial reasoning and problem solving strategies to determine
which regular polygons will tessellate.
Overview of the Lesson
Students use hinged mirrors to discover that the regular polygons are composed of
triangles tessellating around a center point. Students then sketch these triangles on
paper models of the regular polygons having 3 to 10 sides and compute the measure
of the center angles formed by these triangles in each of the different polygons.
Next, students are given opportunities to explore more geometric concepts as they
use mirrors and paper polygons to determine which regular polygons tessellate.
They are challenged to give reasons why some polygons tessellate and others do not.
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