The Math Teacher's Resource Site

Students will write their name in block letters and identify the polygons of the letters they use. They will also decorate their name with a few regular polygons as well.

This is simple little Polygon Project that I found on the web. This is the link by the original creator.

But, once again, it annoyed me to have only 4 lines on a second page, so I compacted it all into a one pager here.

Here’s another of Heeley’s master class video, this one on polygons.

These are some ideas that I took from this lesson:

- Introduction to a topic is something many teachers don’t pay attention to, but I think it’s important to draw the students in.  His intro could easily be modified – arrange the desks in a large circle to leave a gap in the middle of the class, use masking tape to make shapes on the floor large enough for students to stand in (or construction paper cutouts) and then follow his example by sending away students who are not standing in polygons back to their desks.

- Showing students how to cut a standard piece of paper in a way that allows them to fit it around their bodies is a beautiful illustration of geometry allows us to do.

- Finally, I believe that students should be allowed to figure things out on their own, whether it’s the sum of the angles of a polygon or the formula for surface area of a cube, and Heeley’s lessons show how this could be done.  His students are more advanced than most in a typical classroom so his pacing is fast.  But at a slower pace with more guidance, even lower level students can experience this self-discovery method of mathematics.