Now let's look at excerpts from the "Hexominos" video in more detail. In this Interactive Activity, you can observe the students as they categorize the hexominos. Students are encouraged to connect mathematical concepts they had learned before and apply them to solving this problem. We've added annotations that highlight the process of making connections.
After you have observed the classroom, reflect on the following questions:
What connections did students make to their previous learning?
How did the students use and extend their knowledge of geometry vocabulary?
Which Process Standards are addressed by the students?
What strategies or methods do the students use to sort their hexomino pieces?
What comments or questions might you add that would help students make additional connections to other mathematics?
The open-ended nature of this problem-solving task led students to consider a wide variety of attributes of the shapes and make many mathematical connections. They used mathematical vocabulary, such as perimeter, angle, symmetry, and length, to communicate with one another. They used such processes as making representations and making and testing conjectures as they worked. While working in small groups, they considered and refined a number of sorting categories, and then, during the whole-class session, they heard additional ideas and saw examples of a variety of ways of representing the sorting task.
