M is for Mathematical Monday {Symmetry}

Friday I showed you a sneak peek of this week's post. Were you able to guess what our skill was? :)

A few weeks ago we worked on finding lines of symmetry in letters and shapes.  I used our school die cut machine to cut out the following shapes for each team (star, R, U, and H).  Each team memeber was given one of the cutouts and they were to fold their shape to find the line(s) of symmetry. I threw the letter R in there to show that not all shapes have a line of symmetry.

Students then folded their shapes to to determine lines of symmetry.  By using the hands on shapes it allowed my students to understand the definition of symmetry better.  This is an abstract concept and can be very difficult for some students, especially with irregular shapes.

One tip I wanted to share with you that I had my students write down in their notebooks and highlight is, "When working with regular polygons the number of vertices is equal to the number of lines of symmetry".  For example an equaliateral triangle has three vertices, therefore it has three lines of symmetry.

Here is a FREEBIE for when you teach symmetry!