Gagne Event Learning Experience

Samantha Checchin

Gagne Event Learning Experience

Learning Experience: Creating a Tessellation

1. Gain Attention: I will grab the learners’ attention by showing a variety of pictures of tessellations. I will ask students to volunteer if they know what the pictures are called because many might know the pictures to be called tiling rather than tessellations. The difference is that tessellations are tilings that hold certain geometric properties. I will also ask my students if they have seen these types of tiling or tessellations and if so, where have they seen them before. My goal is that the discussion will lead into making the students aware that tessellations are seen in various parts of the world, specifically in buildings as artwork.

2. Establish Purpose: The purpose of this learning experience is to have students be able to connect geometric properties to tessellations that are seen through historical buildings and art.

3. Stimulate Recall of Prior Learning: Students will individually write what they know about rotation, translation, and transformation as it pertains to geometry. They will be able to show what they know by either writing a definition of creating a graph showing each property. I will then choose volunteers to share the definitions of each geometric property so the whole class has been refreshed on these terms.

4. Present Content: Once the definitions have been refreshed in the students’ minds, I will then introduce what exactly a tessellation is to the students. I will first go into the history of tessellations and important mathematicians that are related to tessellations. I then will show examples of tessellations in everyday life, such a honeycomb. While I am showing students the tessellations from history and in nature, I will also show the students how the geometric terms discussed earlier relate to the pictures. I will show them what it means when the tessellation is a rotational tessellation, a transitional tessellation, and if it is both.

5. Guided Learning: After reviewing and introducing the idea of tessellations, I will then transition into how to create a tessellation. Each student will have 2-3 sheets of paper, pencil, eraser, coloring supplies, scissors, and a protractor. I will demonstrate with the students how to begin creating their tessellations. I will go step by step with the students by being in the front of the room where the class can see me so I can show how to create a successful tile to start tessellating. I will walk through each step until everyone has a shape for their tessellation.

6. Elicit Performance: After each student has created a shape to tessellate with, I will allow them individual time to figure out how to tessellate the shape by using rotation and translation. They will each be given an 11x17 piece of paper that their tessellation needs to be created on. They also need to include at least 8 tessellations in their final project. When they have created their tessellation, they will then look at their shape and use their imagination to think of what the shape looks like. Then they will be able to draw and color the tessellation with their idea of the shape in mind. When they have created their tessellation, they must also explain if their tessellation is rotational or transitional and how they know which one it is.

7. Provide Feedback: While students are working on their tessellations, the teacher will be walking around the room helping students who are having the trouble with creating their tessellation.

8. Assess Performance: The students will be turning in their tessellations that will be graded on knowledge of which tessellation it is, participation (if they did it or not), and creativity.

9. Enhance Retention: The tessellations will be hung around the room once I have graded them. I will also refer back to their tessellations when rotation and transition terms enter our vocabulary again. I will also always point out any new tessellations we stumble across whether in nature, art, or in math books.

Rubric:

	3	2	1	0	Score
Mathematical Knowledge	Student knew what kind of tessellation and how they knew it	Student knew what kind of tessellation but did not explain how they knew it	Student did not provide the correct kind of tessellation and no explanation	The student did not complete this part of the assignment
Creativity and Number of tilings	Student worked above and beyond. Very colorful. Included at least 8 tessellations	Student work was colorful and creativity. Only included at least 6 tessellations	Student did average work and only included less than 6 tessellations	The student did not have a tessellation project to be graded for creativity
Completion & Participation	Student followed along with teacher demonstration and turned the project in on time	Student followed along during teacher presentation but turned project 1-3 days late	Student followed along during teacher presentation but turned in project more than 3 days late	Student did not participate in the demonstration in class and never turned in a tessellation project.
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