Creativity in teaching techniques

What comes along in this activity is a presentation of some teaching techniques that involve students in the learning process. During the preparation of this activity, I was wondering what type of lesson activity I shall include. Afterwards I realized that it would be interesting to introduce different types of activities, all related to geometry, that I use while teaching.

A- Cubes and Tetrahedrons drawn in Cavalier’s Perspective

It really interesting, yet difficult, to teach the students to draw 3-dimensional objects in the 2-dimension plane. This perspective focuses on representing all hidden edges with dotted lines, and all visible edges in block lines.

B- Topology – Rubber geometry

- Although topology is one of the hardest topics in math, there are some interesting applications in it such as showing that the donut and the coffee mug are mathematically equivalent.

- Cut Points of alphabetical letters. We usually bring the letters to class and allow them to manipulate those letters to find out the relevant cut points.

C- The difference between a Taurus and a Circle

Students usually don’t know the Taurus; they are interested to realize that a full closed path covering the whole surface of a Taurus is achievable.

D- The dissection of the sphere is a circle

Difficulty in visualizing the dissections of the sphere, lead us to these experiments where we bring the sphere to class and cut it off to produce circles.

Concluding, no one taught me these techniques, I personally developed them through experience, but they are sure reflections of the way of thinking I had when I was a student. I hoped that my teachers were able to show me these stuff, that’s the main reason behind me enjoying to present these stuff in my classes.

All these issues apparently; motivate the students to learn more and search more for interesting stuff in the field of math.