A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for interesting ways to gather feedback from my students. I wanted to get a feel of how my two Geometry Honors classes felt the second half of the year went. At the semester break, their former teacher left for a family illness and my schedule was revamped to take these two classes. I fell in love with these students immediately. They were hard-working, curious individuals that, I have found recently, love a challenge.
So my choice of search for all things awesome sent me to Pinterest! It was there that I found the colorful dodecahedrons created by 12 inscribed pentagons and numerous staples! So as the pin was on my screen, I opened Geometer's Sketchpad and created this template. (I later created a larger version for next year.)
I was only planning to have my Geometry Honors classes participate, but I woke up with the beginnings of a migraine and decided my Algebra 2 classes could do the same thing. I went into school before the kids arrived and made copies on colored paper. While I was setting my room up for my sub, she walked in. I briefly explained that each student needed to fill out 2 pentagons, cut the circles out and fold on the dotted lines (pentagon). For each shape, they were to write about a lesson they learned this year and/or an activity that they enjoyed.
When I came back in the next day, my awesome sub had found my Ziploc baggies, filled each one with a class of pentagons and labelled them!! For the next two periods, while my students worked on their surface area/volume project, I walked around with a few pentagons and a stapler in my hand, putting together a total of 14 dodecahedrons. (It took over a day to staple them all.) As I was walking around, my kids asked questions about the shape that I was creating. So, I showed them a finished one and asked them to guess how many pentagons made the solid. They were really into guessing and many got it right the first time. I then asked what it was called. After a couple seconds they were able to tell me dodecahedron (some said dodecagon first and I just waited).
The next day during my planning period, which fortunately is attached to my lunchtime (!!!), I hung them from the ceiling with fishing line. I thought 14 would be too many, but once I got them all up, I wished I had more. That's why I created a larger version of the inscribed pentagons so it would fill up more space, plus the students would be expected to write more details.
I have passed this project idea along to a couple of colleagues and look forward to sharing with other teachers during post-planning this year, or pre-planning next year. While this is not my original idea, it is an original template.
I need to pull one of them down and count the number of staples. That will be a question I ask my students. I love to listen to them explain their thinking!
I loved reading this "fact" she learned!!
I wrote about the Four Fours activity here.
Some were just sweet comments...
Piling 'em up!
See how small they are once they were hung up? Definitely gonna make larger ones next year.
Panoramic picture of my classroom from my exterior door.
