Making Geometry Come Alive : Student Activities and Teacher Notes

All the basics of geometry in a motivating new format, from Ptolemy to Napoleon, from the Arbelos to the billiard table!

Activities in Geometry is a set of versatile enrichment exercises that covers a very broad range of topics in geometry-Euclidean, post-Euclidean, and non-Euclidean. Several criteria have been used in developing the activities and in selecting the topics that are included. All of them bear heavily, and equally, on our concerns for curriculum goals and classroom management. Each activity is presented as a reproducible student investigation. It is followed by guidelines and notes for the teacher. Each activity is keyed to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Standards, Revised. This link to the NCTM standards allows teachers to facilitate linking classroom activities to specific state and school district content standards. First and foremost, the activities are meant to be motivational. As much as possible, we want this book to achieve the goal of being attractive to students and show them that there is much more to geometry that proving theorems. To demonstrate this aspect of geometry, it is necessary for the investigation to be quite different from what students encounter in their basal texts-different in both substance and form. Presenting activities on a regular basis gives the variety and change of pace needed to sustain interest in any subject