Other Ideas & Resources

Activity Ideas

• Construct any regular sided polygon in a circle using protractor, ruler, compass
  • Construct hexagons (can discuss bees/honeycomb), investigate why sides of hexagon are the same length as radius
  • Can link cross-curriculum to biology, discuss the reasons bees produce hexagonal wax cells
• Circle division problem - add points to the circle and connect them all together using chords, how many sections for each number of dots (fun challenge, surprising)
  • Relevant 3Blue1Brown video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8P8uFahAgc
  • Relevant Wikipedia Article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividing_a_circle_into_areas
• Earthquake Epicentre - draw circles and locate an earthquake epicentre (where circles intersect at one point)
  • can link cross-curriculum to science and geography, discussing how scientists detect earthquakes using seismographers, Ring of Fire (Asia-Pacific region)
• Eratosthenes - calculate the Earth's circumference
  • opportunity to add cross-curriculum link to History, discussing the work of Eratosthenes, the Library of Alexandria
• Photography - where should a photographer position themselves such that two ends of a building facade subtend a right angle at the camera (semicircle)
  • Can have students physically test this by setting up a camera, providing chalk to students to trace out possible positions
  • Cross-curriculum links to art, work of photographers and consideration of framing, positioning
• Rainbow - what is the arc length of a rainbow given the chord length & radius to circumcentre (extension)
  • cross-currlculum links to science, can discuss how rainbows are formed and why they take their shape (depends on viewer's relative position to the rainbow)
• Activities from https://www.transum.org/Software/SW/Starter_of_the_day/Similar.asp?ID_Topic=55
• Pi/Tau Day - can bring in pie or pizza and do circle geometry question
  • Can discuss the context/history of the day, verify and learn about famous approximations of pi
• Bring into the classroom or visit large physical examples of circles, e.g. bicycle wheels, domes, Ferris wheels, roundabouts
  • Could use Google Earth, incorporate images to GeoGebra
  • When bringing in physical examples (can even be purpose-created), should feature different parts of the circle (not just the circumference)
• VR/AR - use VR/AR to immerse students
  • could use GeoGebra AR, or do Google Virtual Tours to allow students to locate real-world examples of circles, apply their understanding of properties
• Ferris Wheels - students design a Ferris wheel, answer related questions (e.g. radius, chord/angles)
  • cross-curriculum links to engineering, students can consider other factors such as forces, weight, stress, aesthetics, lighting, passenger count, etc.
• Embodied modelling of construction - (requires lots of space) students form a large circle and model construction of some property (e.g. related to chords) using lots of string/rope
• Filming - students could spend a lesson finding examples of circles around the school and applying circle geometry properties to answer self-developed questions (e.g. clocks, bins, hoops)
  • gives students space to be creative, develop ICT and presentation skills
• Circle Construction - students spend the lesson exploring/creating different ways of constructing circles (e.g. with compass-and-straight-edge, with string and chalk, using ready-made objects, freehand, student-developed methods)
• News Articles/Media - can find examples of circles mentioned or visible in media, discuss applications (if mathematics involved, can evaluate as a class the accuracy)
• Video/Podcast - in small groups or independently, students film themselves presenting their own circle geometry problems (within a context students create) and show how to solve it (either with themselves on camera or in podcast format with accompanying slides)
  • Students could even go find real-world examples of circles and do their problem-solving on site
  • Videos - uploaded to Google Classroom to share with the rest of the class, can give feedback
• Newspaper Presentation - students present a problem/solution in newspaper format, relate it to a real-world example of circles
• Padlet - invite students to spend a few minutes searching for real-world circle examples or creating example problems and upload to Padlet, class goes through examples