Semi-Regular Tessellations

Subject(s): Mathematics | Age: 14-16 | Type: Interactive resource | Teacher guidance | Publication Year: 2000 - 2009

This NRICH maths challenge could prove suitable for students who have learnt how to work out the angles of regular polygons

This activity supports the idea that the interior angles of regular polygons are a crucial factor in determining whether the regular polygons will fit together or not.

Students are asked to work on paper finding combinations of regular polygons that will fit round a point before moving on to the computers. This may encourage students to work systematically when using the interactivity provided.

URL: http://stem.org.uk/rxfu

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Review

Starting Point

Posted by Lindsay on 1st March 2012

Activity time: 20mins +
Level / prior knowledge: Basic angle…

Activity time: 20mins +
Level / prior knowledge: Basic angle rules
Subject / curriculum links / skills: Angles in maths
Preparation time: Various
Extra resources: Shape tiles

Commentary: On seeing tessellations coming up on the scheme of work I took to the STEM Centre elibrary, along with other online resources, to try and find some suitable resources. However, this proved extremely difficult. I would say this is a good supplementary resource for a lesson, but there is not enough in it to use by itself. It does not contain any templates to go on and create shape tiles, this is not something we have in the department so ideally we needed to create our own. The flash file entitled “polygons” is a good concept but I found it a little fiddly to use - this may work better on an interactive board. The “problem” file contains some demonstrations of tessellations, I projected these on the board to demonstrate the pattern and then discuss their properties. This resource lacks scaffolding, it jumps from one section to another, it is designed as an investigation, but in its original state my lower ability pupils found it too confusing.