Mathed Up!
2D and 3D Shapes
What a great assessment to give young mathematicians in order to test their knowledge on two- and three-dimensional shapes. Learners name various shapes, identify the number of edges, faces, and vertices, match an unfolded version of a...
Curated OER
Escher-Esque Tessellations
Middle and high schoolers participate in a seven-part activity creating Escher-Esque tessellations. They demonstrate their knowledge of geometric transformations after viewing a PowerPoint presentation, conducting Internet research, and...
Curated OER
Seeing is Believing - Or Is It?
Here is a great science lesson plan. It extends the concept of vision into the area of optical illusions, perspective, and tessellation. This well-designed plan has tons of great activities, utilizes interesting video, and should lead to...
Alabama Learning Exchange
Finding Prime
Fifth and sixth graders explore prime numbers. They work with a partner to build rectangular arrays using twelve tiles. Factor pairs are noted and recorded on graph paper. Pupils construct rectangular arrays with a prime number and...
Curated OER
Tiling Tessellations
Students explore tessellations. In this shapes and geometry lesson, students describe the attributes of many of the shapes displayed on an Elmo. Students create examples of tessellations using pattern blocks.
Curated OER
Navajo Weaving: A Lesson in Math and Tradition
Combine geometry and tradition with a lesson that spotlights Navajo weaving. The book, The Goat in the Rug by Charles L. Blood and Martin Link hooks scholars before watching a video of Navajo people tending their sheep and beginning to...
Radford University
Tiling
What more could we want from floor tiles? Using pattern blocks and graph paper, pupils determine ways to completely tile a floor of given dimensions. They consider the aesthetic quality of the tiles by creating a tessellation and...
Radford University
The Ultimate Kitchen Renovation
Cook up a nice new kitchen. Future designers apply quadrilaterals to design a new kitchen floor. They create a tessellation and determine the area of the pattern. As an added component and real-world application, they must stick to a...
Radford University
Google Earth Trip
A trip around the world sounds nice, but for now we'll just have to make do with Google Earth. Pupils use pictures of landmarks to apply geometry concepts. They determine whether each building has bilateral or rotational symmetry, search...
Radford University
Tiling a Kitchen Floor
Cover the floor with math. Pupils work to determine the proper shape to cover a kitchen floor. They first determine the number of tiles to purchase and configure their placement to reduce the amount of waste. Teams finish by creating a...
Exploratorium
Making a Translation Tesselation
Make masterful art using math. An interesting activity has learners create artwork involving tesselations. First they cut out a base shape from index cards, then they apply translations to complete their masterpieces.
New York City Department of Education
Chris’ Garden Dilemma
Make the connections between area, tiling, and multiplication. A performance task and associated unit presents the concept of area and makes the connection to multiplication. Pupils work through three major sections of instruction that...
Virginia Department of Education
Angles in Polygons
Polygons — it's all about the angles. Groups work with dynamic geometry software to find the sum of the measures of the angles of various polygons. After finding the information for several polygons, the groups generate a formula that...
Bowland
Bunting
How much fabric is necessary for bunting? Scholars use given dimensions of triangular bunting (hanging decorations) to determine the amount of fabric necessary to decorate a rectangular garden. The task requires pupils to consider how...
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Unit 6 Math Vocabulary Cards (Grade 5)
Acute angles, nets, and vertices are only a few terms that a set of flash cards includes. Among the 108 cards, two types are available; word cards printed in bold-faced lettering, and corresponding definition cards equipped with an...
Texteam Geometry Institute
Geometry for the High School Classroom
What does it mean for apples to have chirality? This and other explorations in geometry, such as tiling the plane, boxing a tetrahedron, and investigating Euclid's Characteristic, are included in this resource on Euclidean geometry....
World Wildlife Fund
Arctic Take 6
The magic number is six! Using a 6x table, young math stars practice adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing two-digit numbers with the number six. This worksheet also touches on making tessellations with hexagons.
Illustrative Mathematics
Regular Tessellations of the Plane
Bringing together the young artists and the young organizers in your class, this lesson takes that popular topic of tessellations and gives it algebraic roots. After covering a few basic properties and definitions, learners attack the...
Illustrative Mathematics
Hexagonal Pattern of Beehives
Young geometers and biologists investigate the math of nature in an activity that is just the bee's knees. Participants will study the tessellations of hexagons in a beehive, along with the natural rationale behind the specific shape....
K12 Reader
The Art of M.C. Escher
Show your class one way in which art and math are related by teaching them about M.C. Escher. Class members read a brief passage and then respond to five related questions.
National Gallery of Canada
Tantalizing Tessellations!
Examine repeating and intricate patterns with a study of M.C. Escher and a related art activity. Pupils view and discuss the artwork before creating their own tessellating patterns. Step-by-step instructions for creating a template are...
National Gallery of Canada
My Upside-Down World!
M.C. Escher is famous for creating optical illusions. Examine this effect in several of his works and discuss the techniques involved. Inspired by the discussion, learners create an imaginary 3-D world inside of a box using various...
National Gallery of Canada
Lumps, Bumps, Gritty, and Soft!
Texture can really add to a work of art. Explore texture through observation and practice. Learners view and discuss works of art by M.C. Escher. They then create their own texture samplers with six different materials.
National Gallery of Canada
Self-Portrait, Mirrors and Metamorphosis!
Using M.C. Escher's Hand with Reflecting Sphere as inspiration, learners create their own set of self-portraits using various reflective surfaces. The lesson begins with a discussion about portraiture and ends with a presentation of work...