Symmetries IV

Learn more

Help

Please read our disclaimer for lesson plans.

Legal

Of all the different symmetries, this is the hardest for students to understand and to identify. Glide reflections are very tricky to identify in a tiling or wallpaper pattern. The “footprints” image helps, but you can still expect students to have trouble. Using tracing paper over a design may also help. Illuminations provides links to the glide reflection applet, detailed instructions for completing the lesson, and answers to the problems.

Students will:

• Learn about glide reflection—a symmetry transformation that is made up of two other symmetry transformations, a translation and a reflection.

NCTM Standards and Expectations:

• Understand and represent translations, reflections, rotations, and dilations of objects in the plane by using sketches, coordinates, vectors, function notation, and matrices.
• Use geometric ideas to solve problems in, and gain insights into, other disciplines and other areas of interest such as art and architecture.
• Draw and construct representations of two- and three-dimensional geometric objects using a variety of tools.

North Carolina Curriculum Alignment