Unto the 4th Dimension

Today's Warm Up asks students to explain the difference between "2-D" and "3-D".  This gives me a chance to see what my students already know about the concept of dimension, and it gives them a chance to connect with prior knowledge.  I find that many of my students know only a little: to some, "3-D" is a special enhancement to certain movies.

I display the prompt using the slideshow for the lesson.  The lesson opener follows our Team Warm-up routine, with students writing their answers in their Learning Journals.

Goal-Setting

I display the Agenda and Learning Targets for today's lesson.    I tell my students that "dimension" is a difficult word to define, so I will be giving them lots of examples to help them understand the concept.  The movie we are about to see does a good job of introducing the main ideas.  At the end of the lesson, they should be able to describe the difference between objects that are 3-dimensional and those which have only 2 dimensions.

We will end this lesson by following our Team Size-Up routine.  The Lesson Close prompt asks students to compare the number of dimensions of Flatland to the number of dimensions in our own world.  I will refer to Flatland throughout the unit to help students understand the concept of a plane.

Homework

For homework, I assign problems #9-11 from Homework Set 1.  These problems ask students to apply definitions and concepts that we have not really discussed, but were introduced in the movie.   Problem #9 asks students to classify familiar geometric objects according to number of dimensions.  Problem #10 asks students to find examples of polygons in the real world.  I emphasize that the polygons do not have to be regular.  Many can be found among the block letters on road signs during their bus ride home.  Problem #11 introduces the concept of a cross-section, which was explored in the movie.