Got a great idea at camp today. Have students sit back-to-back and create a drawing. 1st round, they describe their drawing to a partner. The partner may not ask questions and needs to replicate the drawing. 2nd round, the partner may ask yes or no questions, but that is the only communication. 3rd round, full out conversation. Then they discuss when it was easiest, which drawings looked the most alike. This was a great introduction to teamwork and communication. It works on SMP#6 attending to precision, as students must give precise directions to have any chance at having the drawings look the same. This will also be a great intro in Geometry where precise definitions become so important.
Discussion led to when you might use this in your life, what portion was easiest, how we could improve our replications...overall really good.
This may be my first day activity for this year. I also would love to use it when we start talking similar and congruent figures. We can use tools to increase our precision, maybe even limit the number of clues in an effort to discover the triangle congruence and similarity theorems!
I did this with geometry and gave them diagrams of things that had points, lines, and planes on the first day of school. Students had to discuss and then precision and the reasoning behind why we need the exact definitions and need to form our own language motivated the rest of the lesson. You should definitely do it...it is a blast!
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