Activity Overview
Students understand that a tessellation is covering of a plane with a pattern of figures so there are no overlaps or gaps. They draw quadrilaterals and triangles and explore monohedral, dihedral, and trihedral tessellating patterns.
Before the Activity
See the attached PDF file for detailed instructions for this activity
Print page 25 from the attached PDF file for your class
During the Activity
Distribute the page to the class.
Follow the Activity procedures:
Draw a regular polygon
Reflect the polygon across its own sides and observe the pattern
Observe that triangles, squares, and hexagons tesselate a plane with monhedral pattern
Note that dihedral tiling patterns are formed by a regular pentagon together with a rhombus, a regular pentagon with a heptagon, a regular octagon with a square, and a dodecagon with a triangle
Drag the original figure around the screen and note that the pattern remains unchanged
Use transformational tools to check if isosceles or scalene right triangles always tessellate the plane
Determine the methods by which a plane can be tessellated by a rectangle
Experiment with ways to tessellate the plane with a trapezoid
Understand that any quadrilateral tessellates the plane by a 180° rotation about the midpoint of its sides
After the Activity
Review student results:
As a class, discuss questions that appeared to be more challenging
Re-teach concepts as necessary