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Flipping Fish

Flipping Fish

Students will transform their knowledge about geometry into a work of art as they create a scene using the reflection transformation.

Lesson Plan

Supplies Needed

Gather all the supplies needed to bring your craft ideas to life! From paints and markers to glue and scissors, our crafts section has everything to spark creativity and make every project truly special.

  • Paper

Steps

  • Step 1

    Transformation geometry refers to the movement of objects in a plane. The four types of transformtion are translation (sliding a shape across a plane), rotation (spinning the figure around a point), reflection (flipping the object over a line) and dilation (making the figure larger or smaller). Have students think about where they might see these transformations in real life, such as hands rotating on a clock, the reflection of trees in a lake, resizing a picture on their phone or computer, etc.

  • Step 2

    Ask students to create an underwater fish scene using the reflection type of transformation by flipping basic shapes. First they can use watercolor to paint a water background on a piece of paper. Next have them cut out several basic geometric shapes in duplicate or triplicate or more (triangles, rectangles, squares, circles, etc.). Then have them arrange the shapes into fish - some swimming from left to right and others from right to left to demonstrate the reflection technique.

  • Step 3

    When they're satisfied with the design layout, have them use markers to decorate the shapes that make up the fish and then glue them onto the background scene. They might choose to use some extra shapes to embellish the background scene with other images such as plants, shells, etc.

  • Step 4

    Ask students to present their scene and identify where the images "flipped" to produce a reflected image.

Standards

MATH: Create models that demonstrate math concepts and attend to precision.

MATH: Analyze, compare, create, and compose math ideas using written, oral, and drawn lines, shapes, forms and patterns.

MATH: Describe, compare, quantify, and classify objects by attributes. Sort objects into categories.

Adaptations

Ask students to work on a jigsaw puzzle and note all the geometry transformations they use. Have they flipped over a piece? Did they slide it across the table? Did they rotate the piece to make it fit?

Have students keep a log to note examples of transformations they've performed. Perhaps they rearranged furniture in their room (translation), edited and resized photos on their phone or iPad (dilation), looked in a mirror (reflection) or spun a dreidel or top (rotation).