Informal Geometry

Today's activities provided another opportunity for people to be "smart at math" in different ways.  The visual and tactile nature of folding paper into boxes and squares made geometry very concrete.  As I am starting to get used to, it may have been informal, but I felt less smart in math as than usual.  I am more familiar with drawing a geometric shape and learning all the rules about how angles and sides are related.  My stretching is continuing.

I was hoping we would discuss the use of creative writing in math class that was the subject of the Halpern article.  I thought that was a different type of example of how to make geometry (or any math) more accessible for students who have strong written expression skills.  As students get into Middle School, I often hear that students start being divided into those that are more humanities focus and those that are more math/science focused.  I read The Phantom Tollbooth last quarter and I felt it was a fiction book that would appeal to students who love words and/or numbers.  A bored boy travels in a toy car through a tollbooth to a place filled with adventures based on letters and numbers.  The Mathemagician rules the Kingdom of Digitopolis and a character called the Dodecahedron has 12 faces with different expressions.  It is another possibility for giving our strong writers an informal entry point into geometry.