“We Want to Make Traps for St. Patrick’s Day!”
Geometry and Cross-Divisional Collaboration in the Makerspace
When I received this email from the kindergarten teacher I thought it had the opportunity to be a really fun project that could really address some of the concepts she mentioned; shapes, corners, sides, and nets. For those that don’t know what a geometry net is, the image below should clear it up.
I have also seen some fun projects with nets that close with the pull of a string, which I suggested we incorporate into the project.
And just to add one more layer of complexity to the project, I asked if we could try and figure out a collaboration with the high school geometry teacher, who I had just been talking to about a project for her class.
From a project design standpoint these were the key elements:
- Give hands on experience to kindergartners with elements of shapes and nets.
- Have high school students design nets.
- Have older and younger students collaborate to make a closing net to trap a leprechaun.
There were certain logistical challenges with connecting the Kindergartner’s with the Geometry class, the biggest being there was one group of kindergartners and three Geometry classes. Making sure that the kindergartners didn’t do the same thing three times was important. Working with the two teachers, we devised a plan that went like this:
- I would show the high schoolers how to design nets on Google Slides using red lines for the exterior outline, and blue lines for the interior lines. We would also discuss how to coach the little ones with “relentless positivity.”
- Selecting a number of the designs I would laser cut them from cardstock, using a dotted line cut for the folds.
- The first geometry class would work with the K’s to figure out where to punch holes in order to close the shape. The high schoolers would ask questions and help with some of the fine motor skills if needed.
- For the next phase I again used the students net designs, but this time I cut the shapes completely out of cardboard, making a stack of shapes that could be made into a net.
- The second geometry class would work with a student to help figure out how to tape the shapes together to make the net. There are many ways each set of shapes could be taped together correctly, but not all arrangements will work. The kids would work to test their arrangement of parts and then tape them together.
- The third geometry class repeated the task of the first, but now on the full size cardboard nets. Using some 3D printed leprechauns for testing, the kids got to see if their solution worked.
This project was not only fun but helpful from a content standpoint. It allowed both groups to put information they had learned on paper into practice in the real world. For the high school students it took something that seems fairly abstract (3D shape nets) and reminded them that these concepts apply to the real world. They also got to practice their calculation of surface area in preparation for learning volume. The kindergartners got an opportunity to make something that used shapes they had learned for a fun purpose. For both groups they got the added bonus of connecting with an older or younger student.
The day after we finished the project I was walking across campus and one of the high school students called out, “Mr. Zigler, we did good right?”. I said they had in fact done great. He then told me that he had just seen his kindergarten partner and the had fist bumped. I can’t imagine a better outcome.
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I design creative, engaging, and purposeful projects utilizing makerspace tools for teachers and students K-12. If you would like more of these projects, or to learn how I design them, purchase my book, 3 Modes of Making.
