Classifying quadrilaterals is one of those geometry skills that is hard for many students to fully master. To give students some additional practice with the attributes of quadrilaterals, today they used Dash and Blockly to create rectangles, squares, and rhombuses. Students had a ton of fun and were engaged from start to finish. We started by exploring
Math is Fun Quadrilateral Interactive and using a
graphic organizer to plan out the shapes that they would use Blockly to code. Once students planned out their shapes, they were given an iPad to write the code in Blockly. Creating a rhombus that is not a square was the most challenging task for students. Blockly doesn't have a 135 degree angle option. It took the students a bit of thinking but eventually someone realized that they could combine two turns to create 135 degree angle. Here's the code they came up with.
Students had a choice of whether they wanted to use Legos to create a pen attachment for Dash to draw their shapes, or if they wanted to draw the shapes by hand and then have Dash travel the perimeter of the shape. Everyone chose to create a pen attachment. This actually turned out to be much more complicated than any of the students imagined. Their first attempts were too wobbly and did not draw on the paper. Several of their second attempts were successful, but students quickly realized that as Dash turns, the pen needs to lift up or their shapes don't look like quadrilaterals. It was a learning experience for me as well as for the students. Most groups ran out of time and did not get to finish testing their code. The students really want to finish this lesson, so we will finish it after Spring Break.
When I teach the other fourth grade classes later this week, I'm going to hold off on the pen attachments and just have the students draw the quadrilaterals by hand and have Dash travel the perimeter of the shapes they draw.
Hopefully this modification will enable the other two classes to complete the challenges in one 45 minute class period.
You can grab the lesson
here. If you try this with your class, I'd love to hear how it goes and any modifications you make.
Michelle
