Quadrilateral Game

We played this amazing game to learn quadrilateral properties. It is a game board of 6 rows* 6 columns. Each box mentions a particular quadrilateral property which the student has to build. The start is a square on the pegboard. The kids then stretch one or more vertices to match the quadrilateral description in the box they arrive at after throwing a die. The lesser the number of vertices changed determines the winner. Kids kept checking if the existing quadrilateral matches the description to score a zero.

There were interesting questions/ googlies.

A quadrilateral with no reflection/ rotation symmetry. Does a parallelogram have a line of symmetry parallel to it's side.. Along it's diagonal... They then formed a parallelogram which had reflection symmetry along the diagonal only to find that it's a rhombus and that it doesn't work for a parallelogram which is not a rhombus.

 Having got that insight when they arrived at the question- a quadrilateral with one diagonal as a line of symmetry, they knew it applies to only a square or rhombus, and rectangles and other parallelograms are disqualified.

A quadrilateral with exactly one angle greater than 180. This question surprised one team as they were thinking only of regular quads. They then did a quick subtraction and understood the remaining 3 angles need to be acute, and then stretched the band into an arrow- head.

One team of girls managed to fit the initial square into whatever properties they arrived at and hence the score on both sides were zero even after 10 chances!

On the whole the class had a fun time playing the game over and over again and learnt the quad properties with ease. A learning experience I hope which stays a long time. Psst.. The teachers played the game as well. It was addictive. The fifthers too found out about the game and tried their hand and it.

An extension was to write 2 new descriptions of quadrilaterals which could be included in the game grid.

- Rafia Riaz