tessellations

Lake Munmorah Public School

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	Tessellating Patterns - Using the Drawing toolbar

Possible lesson for stages 2 & 3

Drawing Shapes - students should be aware of the ZOOM tool - they will need to zoom in and out for this activity.

Rectangular Pattern
Draw a small rectangle near the top of the page using the rectangle tool.		Rectangle tool
Instead of trying to draw several rectangles the same, use copy and paste to create rectangles that are exactly the same.
Position the rectangles on the page using the arrow keys on the keyboard, so they make a tessellating pattern.

Triangle Pattern
Use Autoshapes > basic shapes > triangle (either triangle will do). Use copy and paste to create triangles exactly the same.
Position the triangle to make a pattern. You can make more exact movements by pressing the Control key and the arrows at the same time. (nudging)
Changing the zoom on your page to 100% makes it easier to see your shape when nudging.
You will need to flip a triangle to fill in the spaces in the pattern.
To flip a shape go to Draw > Rotate or Flip
Again, use copy and paste once you have flipped a triangle. Use the flipped triangle to fill the spaces in your pattern.

Final Pattern
Let the children experiment with different shapes to find one that tessellates.
Use the techniques above copy and paste, nudging, flipping etc, to complete your pattern.

Colour your patterns using the fill colour tool.		Fill colour tool

Each pattern can be labelled using the text box tool.		Text box tool