Ramping Up an Old Project

The transformation standard is last seen for sophomores in Grade 6.  So, over the years, after assessments are history, my 8th graders and I embark on a geometry journey of sorts as we dive into translations, reflections, rotations, and dilations.  (You have read the lesson plan in an earlier post.)

As their assessment, students must create a pre-image and transform this shape with three of the four transformations they learned about.  They are to plot these points to display their understanding of the material.  Once the "mathy" portion of the assignment is completed, they need to write a story that ties all the pictures into one storyline, plot, tale, fairy tale, etc.

In the past it's all been on paper and pencil.

This year, decided to ramp up the lesson.  Infuse a little technology into the learning.

To make sure that students learned the math behind all the transformations, I had them draw a pre-image and apply the three transformations on paper first.  I wanted them to do the math to show how the math works.  I used a worksheet that I created in Smartboard for them to organize their work.

I then taught them how to use Geometer's SketchPad to create their images.  My notes are below.

1)  First, select a New Sketch from the File Menu.
2)  To get a coordinate plane, go to the Graph Menu and choose Coordinate System.
3)  To plot points...two ways
      a)  Select the "point" tool from the toolbar
      b)  Go to the Graph menu and choose Plot Point.  Simply type in the points you have found and they will show up on the coordinate plane.
4)  To make the lines, select the line tool from the toolbar, click on both endpoints and a line will appear.
5)  Label the points...this is a little confusing at times and I haven't figured out why.  Click on the first point and an A should appear.  Click on the second point, and a B should appear.  If it doesn't, you can try to double click to manually label the point.
6)  In some pre-images, an arc (curved line) might be needed.  To get the arc, select all the points needed for the arc by holding down the shift key.  Go to the Construct menu and choose Arc Through 3 Points.
7)  To add text, select the text tool from the tool bar.
8)  To print, go to Print Preview and select the button, Scale to Fit Page.  THIS IS CRITICAL!