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TEACHER TRAININGGeometry Part 2: Shapes, Translations, and Reflections (3-5)

Intermediate students explore categories of triangles and quadrilaterals and manipulate these shapes in space.

Students collaborate with partners to move these shapes in translation and in mirror reflection.

Students integrate their understanding of geometry and dance to create their own choreography about shape transformations.

About this Workshop

In this arts integrated math training, grade 3-5 teachers learn to use creative movement to help students build the hierarchy of shapes and their transformations. Many students find it difficult to visualize flat shapes flipping and turning through 3-dimensional space. Join this workshop to discover how creative movement contributes powerfully to the development of geometric thinking.

Learn how to guide students to use stretchy dance bands to construct the hierarchy of shapes. Students physically feel how changes in body level, body extension, and weight transfer smoothly move the body through different types of triangles and quadrilaterals. Students then collaborate with partners to connect, combine, and move these shapes through 3-dimensional space. When students feel slides, flips, and rotations with their bodies, their learning is deep and long lasting. When learners expand and deepen their spatial reasoning, they can easily identify complex geometric structures in the world around us!


Breakdown

Grade Level: 3 - 5

Workshop Time: 3 hours

Workshop Setup

  • LCD projector and Screen

  • Speakers

  • Chairs arranged in a semicircle facing the screen

  • Plenty of room for movement

Resources Required



About Moving Through Math

Spatial & Geometric Concepts

Students explore lines and shapes as they move through space

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Moving Through Math provides professional development workshops for STEAM educators eager to bring the benefits of arts integration into their classrooms.

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Browse our instructional materials for teaching Geometry

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