#Tessellation templates cat cut out series#

images of local buildings, art by culturally relevant artists, tiles in your school environment). You could edit this PowerPoint to include images that are of increased relevance to your students (e.g.

Use the PowerPoint to introduce students to Escher’s work and the idea of tessellations.You will make connections between mathematical concepts and their application to art, introduce tessellations, and support students to develop their understanding of area and length in relation to tessellations. Introduction: This session introduces the artwork of Escher and the concept of tessellation. This unit of work has most of the mathematics front-loaded to best support students in developing ideas for their piece of art. The teacher supports this work with examples of art that are based on the ideas of the mathematics being explored. It is also expected that any session may extend beyond one teaching period.

#Tessellation templates cat cut out series#

This unit of work is presented as a series of six sessions, however, more sessions than this may be required. Te reo Māori kupu such as rōpinepine (tesselate, tessellation, tiling, mosaic), neke (translate), huri (rotate), and whakaata (reflect) could be introduced in this unit and used throughout other mathematical learning. Look online for examples of tessellation in the natural and human-made world. Look for examples of tessellations in students’ environment such as lino, or tile patterns, facades of buildings, or honeycombs in beehives. Mosaic tiles can be created from fired clay, or cobblestones created from concrete. Tessellation might fit well with efforts to beautify the school environment. For example, tessellations are prominent in Islamic art traditions, and in tapa cloth designs from Pacific nations. The contexts for this unit can be adapted to suit the interests and cultural backgrounds of your students. Motivate students to add a new, undiscovered tessellation to the class display. displaying the work of students as models for others.altering the complexity of shapes students are asked to use in their tessellations.The difficulty of tasks can be varied in many ways including: providing opportunities for students to work collaboratively in partnerships, and to share and justify their ideas in small groups, and with the whole class.providing teacher support with the drawing of tessellations.directly modelling examples of tessellations and transformations.

asking students to justify why they believe tessellating patterns occur.

providing physical manipulatives, regular polygons, or online tools (many are available), so that students can experiments with the tessellation and transformation of different shapes.

The learning opportunities in this unit can be differentiated by providing or removing support to students and by varying the task requirements. Ways to differentiate include:

Explore and use art-making conventions, applying knowledge of elements and selected principles through the use of materials and processes.

Investigate the purpose of objects and images from past and present cultures and identify the contexts in which they were or are made, viewed, and valued.

Main resource: Creating Escher-Type Drawings. The idea of this unit is for students to develop their understanding of the mathematical concepts that underlie the creation of Escher type tessellations and apply this to the creation of an art piece.

You might use the ideas from Measuring Angles, Level 3 for this purpose.

Note that this unit does not include explicit teaching around angles, although this could be included as an additional point of learning. Either the corners of the basic shape all fit together to make 360°, or the corners of some basic shapes fit together along the side of another to again make 360°. This requires the vertices to fit together. The same figure (or group of figures) come together to completely cover a wall or floor or some other plane. The key features of tessellations are that there are no gaps or overlaps. These tessellations provide a strong structure for their two different purposes. The brick wall provides a tessellation with rectangles and the honeycomb is a tessellation of regular hexagons. Bees use a basic hexagonal shape to manufacture their honeycombs. Brick walls are made of the same shaped brick repeatedly laid in rows. They also provide a nice application of some of the basic properties of polygons. Tessellations are a neat and symmetric form of decoration. Occasionally you can see them in the living room as the basis of the pattern on carpets and in parquetry wooden floors. Tessellations are found all over the place but especially in the kitchen and bathroom on tiles and lino. The unit of work is based on the work of the Dutch artist Escher who utilised mathematical concepts, including tessellation, to create mathematically pieces of artwork.