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Geometry Everywhere
Betty R. Allen
Hughes High School, Hughes, Arkansas
Subject: Mathematics
Grade: 10
"With this activity comes a certain sharing of ideas that
is not usually found in math problem-solving settings."
Purpose and Description of Project
The intent of Betty Allen's enrichment activity was to make students
more aware of geometric shapes and lines in objects around them.
Activities
Students were divided into five groups-four to photograph geometric
shapes and concepts at home, on the farm, in town, and at the
lake, and one to label the resulting photographs and assemble
them in four scrapbooks. After Allen's initial introduction, the
groups met and planned their after-school visits to the assigned
sites; then they visited the sites and, when they observed geometric
forms, photographed them from more than one angle. Each group
shot 24 to 36 photos which were commercially developed. When the
photos were finished, the groups met during class to identify,
without teacher assistance, the shapes in each picture. "The
scrapbook committee assembled the materials, labeled the photos,
and laid out attractive pages highlighting the shapes." Students
were evaluated on the quality of their participation.
Materials, Resources, and Expenses
The students' primary resources were their eyes and imaginations.
They used four 35 mm cameras, six rolls of film, four loose-leaf
scrapbooks with adhesive-backed pages and clear plastic overlays,
two packages of extra pages, and six packages of decorative stickers.
The photos were commercially developed.
Outcomes and Adaptability
"The creative, inquisitive nature of the average and below
average student came out to an unsuspected degree," notes
Allen. They relished looking at their finished photos to see how
well they had captured what they thought they had seen. Also interesting
was the degree of carryover to visual analysis in problem solving.
Allen found that the students were interested from beginning to
end and that they planned well and carried out their plans promptly.
As they talked about what they might find and, later, what they
did find, the photos seemed to humanize geometry. As an added
benefit, the resulting scrapbooks became a useful resource to
use with future classes.
Allen suggests that this math activity could be adapted to any
locality or class size. In addition to the topics here, geometry
in transportation could be added or substituted. Because the three-
to five-week project would take little class time, it could easily
be worked into the regular curriculum at certain times of the
year. Weather would be a definite factor if most of the pictures
were to be taken outside as was the case with this project.