Today I learned an amazing new tool to use in the classroom called Geometer's Sketchpad. This tool is great to get students to interactively work with different shapes and polygons and observe different properties of these shapes/polygons. In class today, I did an exercise called Quadilateral Exploration on Sketchpad where I looked at the different properties of quadilaterals, rectangles, trapezoids, parallelograms, rhombuses, kites, and squares and how they were similar and different from each other. The exercise forced me to think about what made each quadilateral unique by allowing me to manipulate the different shapes and observe how they changed. For example, a quadilateral is any 4-sided polygon. Therefore, trapezoids, parallelograms, rhombuses, kites, rectangles, and squares are ALL quadilaterals.
As I went through the exercise, I started to see the quadilateral "tree". Trapezoids and kites are subsets of quadilaterals. Parallelograms are a subset of trapezoids. Rhombuses are a subset of both parallelograms and kites. Rectangles are also a subset of parallelograms. Finally, a square is a subset of rhombuses and rectangles.
Sketchpad allows users to construct shapes which is trickier than it sounds. I had to be mindful on how I would know that I constructed a right angle or two parallel lines. It was such a great exercise to stretch one's understanding of geometry. I will definitely be using some of the activities I learned today in my own classroom in the future.
Great Hai!
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