Education Technology


Exploring Transformations

Activity Overview

The students will explore reflections of an object over the x-axis, y-axis, and origin.

Before the Activity

Teacher instructs students' to form the letter in the 1st quadrant.
Make sure to tell the students' that they should not plot on top of someone's point. After the students' have successfully formed an L in the 1st quadrant, instruct the students' to find their coordinate from the bottom of their calculator and write it down. After the students' have had ample time to copy their coordinates, stop the activity.

During the Activity

Instruct the students' to rewrite their ordered pair by taking the opposite of the original x-coordinate and leaving y alone.
Next, start the activity again. (Be sure to not clear data in between the last activity and this one). Instruct students to find their new ordered pair and plot. Stop the activity and discuss what the students notice.
Before restarting the activity, ask the student to rewrite the original ordered pair with the x-coordinate staying the same and the y-coordinate being changed to its opposite.
Have the students make a conjecture about what they think will happen. Begin the activity and discuss results.
Lastly, repeat the above activities making an ordered pair with using opposites of both coordinates

After the Activity

As an extension to this activity, the teacher could have the students explore various other transformations such as dilations, slides, rotations, and other reflections such as over the y=x line.