Back to NCTM San Diego: Presentation Summary
Tessellation - a repeating pattern that completely covers a plane surface, leaving no gaps or overlaps.Day 1
- Students work in groups tessellating regular polygons. They will have an envelope with at least 10 copies of each of the regular polygons shown on the following page. They will determine which regular polygons will tessellate, and which pairs of regular polygons will tessellate. This activity can be extended to determine rules for tessellating, or which other polygons will tessellate (any triangle, any quadrilateral, hexagons with parallel and congruent opposite sides, etc.).
- Show Escher drawings on overhead projector, along with examples from former students. Include steps students took to get their tessellations.
- Go over "general rules" for tessellations using equilateral triangles, squares and/or regular hexagons as the basic shape. The software program "TesselMania" from MECC is a good resource for this.
- Have students practice tessellating by going step-by-step through a common tessellation.
Day 2 (and 3, if you wish)
Have students try their own patterns, and see if they can come up with a pattern they like.
Materials needed: A classroom set of scissors; rolls of tape, masking or transparent; a classroom set of rulers; at least a few compasses (for constructing equilateral triangles and/or regular hexagons); scratch paper, with one side shaded, if possible (so students don't flip the pieces when they cut the paper).
Reminders for students
- Your tessellation doesn't have to "be" anything - sometimes the best tessellations are plain patterns.
- You will need to turn in the shape that you traced around to get your pattern, as well as a description of the cutting and taping process you used to create your pattern.
- Create a pattern you like first, then decide if you want to make anything out of that pattern, rather than deciding beforehand that you want to make "a dog."
Paul Kelley
Anoka High School
Anoka, MN 55303
pkelley@informns.k12.mn.us
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