Geometry is an important element of our daily life if we look attentively. It is one of the earliest areas of mathematics. This discipline of mathematics studies the characteristics and relationships of points, lines, surfaces, solids, and higher-dimensional analogs.
It is a fundamental part of math that students must be good at. Students can better grasp the concepts and principles by engaging in geometry activities. Many types of geometry activities can be used in the classroom, including worksheets, puzzles, and projects.
However, Geometry is a challenging but rewarding subject that high school students should take advantage of. Now imagine teaching it to your students using unique and innovative games. as it is all about forms and how we perceive them.
It is also significant in our daily activities like culinary arts, video games, and products such as medical devices and even vehicles. These are places where we don’t even notice geometry is being used. So, let’s look at some unique activities with an element of fun so that you can deploy them in your next geometry class, which is proven to be equally helpful for students with dyscalculia.
Geometry activities for high schoolers
Geometry is a subject that both students and teachers look forward to. Shapes, lines, degrees, angles, and more concern geometry and its versatility which is essentially a part of our everyday. Therefore, several enjoyable activities help students understand ideas and allow them to practice fully. But, have you ever noticed the various resources available around us to engage in more fun frolics (example: books). So, let’s dive deep and have a look at these fun activities that can make geometry learning engaging and interesting for you.
1. The 3D shape activity
A fun way of getting started and breaking the ice is by giving students toothpicks, play dough, slime, or marshmallows and encouraging them to create 3D objects such as prisms, circles, and cubes. It’s a helpful approach for children to learn about the qualities of 3D forms in the actual world! A child’s brain is a sponge that soaks up information and learns best through play. Perhaps, playing with 3D shapes using everyday materials that are easily available at home or in the classroom may help children drastically.
You can share a list of shapes on the board and set a timer. Children can make 3D shapes out of toothpicks and playdough while ticking off the shapes from the list. This will help your child learn about angles, volume, surface area, and more.
2. What shape is your land?
This activity is about finding the area of different lands. This can be turned into a fun classroom activity by asking the students to measure their classroom area. Teachers can provide students with measuring tapes and all necessary items for demarkations and calculations.
For this activity, students can be allocated into 4 teams. The teacher can give different situations to each team. Some of them can be:
Team 1: Find out the area of the entire classroom, and then subtract the area which is the teacher’s area, which constitutes of the teacher’s desk, cupboard, and the area near the blackboard.
Team 2: Calculate the total area of the class, and then subtract the total covered area. The covered area here constitutes an area with benches, cupboard, and a teachers’ table.
Team 3: Calculate the total area of the class, and compare the distance between each row.
Team 4: Calculate the total area of the class, and of how much area a bench takes up. Now calculate how many benches can fit into the empty space of the classroom.
To make this activity more fun and challenging, a rule like “whichever team first finishes wins” can be introduced. This activity helps students understand concepts such as area and perimeter and allows them to practice using these concepts in a real-world setting. This activity also benefits students by allowing them to use their geometry knowledge to solve a problem.
3. Set up a geometry scavenger hunt.
The geometry scavenger hunt can be fun and engaging to learn geometry. To set up the hunt, start by hiding objects around the room or house that have geometric shapes. Then, give each 5 clues in the form of a riddle. The players need to solve the riddle in order to find the hidden object. As they search for the objects, they will need to identify the shape, name its properties, and explain how it is used in the real world. Once everyone has found all of the shapes on their list, you can discuss the different ways that geometry is used in everyday life.
This activity is not only a great way to learn about geometry, but it is also a fun way to get everyone moving and interacting with each other. The activity is helpful in making them learn more about shapes and figures, recognizing and identifying them while learning more about their properties. With shapes like hexagons and quadrilaterals, that is otherwise confusing, such activities act as a catalyst to lesson learning and resolve confusion at-a-go.
4. Shape-identifying BINGO
Shape-identifying BINGO is a game that can be played in a classroom to help students learn about geometry. Each student is given a card/ BINGO template with different shapes in the game. The object of the game is to identify the shapes using clues and hints given by the teacher. Once determined, student(s) can mark them off their list. The first player to mark off all of the shapes on their card is the winner.
Shape-identifying BINGO can help students learn about various geometry concepts such as identifying shapes, naming shapes, and understanding spatial relationships. The game can also help students develop fine motor and problem-solving skills.
5. Junior Architects
Each one of us has the perfect picture of our dream home in our minds. This thought can be turned into a creative activity for high schoolers. Teachers can ask students to calculate the area of their house as homework, and the next day when they arrive to the class with the measurements, they can modify the exterior and interiors as per their liking.
For example, if the garden is a total of 100 sq. ft, the student if needed, can add a pool right in between, which can be around 70sq.ft. The same can be done with bedrooms. The student can modify the balcony of their room and add that area to their room area to expand it and make it bigger. This will not only teach students volumes about the area and other concepts related to geometry but also push their creative buttons the most.
6. Let’s talk about Symmetry
Symmetry being a crucial concept of geometry can be inculcated through a fun activity. It is a well-known fact that symmetry can be found in nature, and in all man-made things, which also includes the 7 wonders of the world. Students in this activity can be asked to pick any one of the 7 wonders of the world, and then browse its dimensions on the internet and jot them down on a piece of paper.
Students can also be asked to get printouts of the monument that they chose. Later, these dimensions can be used to mark on the printout, and this will teach the students how the monuments are made in symmetry.
To make this activity even more interesting, students can be asked to perform this activity with natural things like flowers. Students can measure dimensions and notice the symmetry in these objects.
This activity will encourage students to know more about the concept and will inculcate them to learn and grasp more about symmetry.
7. The Shape Quilt
The shape quilt can be a fun activity to teach high schoolers about complex shapes, rhombuses, and trapezoids. Through this activity, teachers can also ask students to demark various angles. Basically, on a piece of paper, various dots need to be formed to enable the students to join the dots and make shapes and angles.
Once dots are added, the paper would look something like this:
The students will now connect the dots and mark shapes and angles, and in return get points for the same. The points can be allocated as per:
Rhombus: 1 Point
Trapezium: 2 Points
Parallelogram: 2 Points
Right Angle: 1 point
Obtuse Angle: 2 Points
And so on…
These points and the shapes and angles can be changed by the educator as per their preference. In the end, whoever scores more, wins the game. This game would be best played by 2 people on one sheet. The twist of the activity is that one student can draw one line at a time. As the dots come to an end, there would now be no scope for more shapes or angles, and this is where the game will come to an end.
To make the game even more exciting, teachers can introduce rules like if the other student makes a shape using any previously drawn shape by the opponent, they get double the points. For example, if the student draws any shape made out of the right angle, they will get the sum of the points for the right angle and the shape they made.
Geometry activities: Helping theory turn practical
There is a very strong reason why teachers and parents support the deployment of activities to make sure that the learning does not remain in theory. For example, you can’t just put a baby in the water and trust them to swim. They must see and touch the water and practice, explore, and feel it. Then students gradually learn the more difficult components of swimming, such as floating, moving limbs, retaining your breath underwater, and so on.
This is very similar to geometry. Students who have never had a solid knowledge of the fundamentals of geometry will struggle. Geometry’s barrage of knowledge can easily drown them. Regardless of what level of geometry is taught, a lesson that involves fundamental geometry is not only necessary but also critical. Give your students enough time and space.
When they indulge in these smart yet with a tinge of fun games, they come face to face with many practical applications and an understanding of geometry. Math, in particular, is not just limited to their textbooks, it goes much beyond that, and teachers can help them explore that side of it!
Conclusion
Geometry influences us in even the most fundamental aspects of our lives. It helps us comprehend certain concepts and enhances our life quality in whatever shape it takes. Your geometry lesson has something for every student: hands-on practice, real-world applications, and possibilities for entertaining classroom activities. Games are an engaging approach to engage students in learning and make the experience unforgettable.
Use these exercises to reinforce essential ideas and keep students interested in their studies. If you wish to make it fun on some days, don’t shy away from using these quotes too. They’ll be geometry experts in no time!
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,