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

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!