Exploring Symmetry

People in our class noticed that lots of the kowhaiwhai patterns were symmetrical.

We have talked about symmetry before, but we hadn't explored it. Mrs Walker gave each thinking partner pair a sheet of photocopied pictures that all had lines of symmetry.

We rotated all of them both 1/2 and 1/4 turns to see if they looked any different, or if they looked as if they had been translated.

Some looked the same if they were rotated 1/2 and 1/4 turns.
Some looked the same when they were rotated a 1/2 turn but not a 1/4 turn.
Some you could tell they had been rotated on each and every rotation.

We wondered why, we had to look closely and look for a pattern, which we learnt to do in Term 1 when making observations.

Ryan said all the sides of all of the objects were the same.
Marley said the ones that look the same on 1/2 turns have two opposite sides that are the same.

Mrs Walker said these shapes had rotational symmetry. The number of times a shape is the same as it rotates is called the shapes' order of symmetry. We worked out the order of symmetry for our shapes and images. We have some impressive thinkers in our room.

Thank you Marley and Jacob for leading us on this investigation with your carefully observations and questions.