Square Moves

Curriculum Goal

Give and follow multistep instructions involving movement from one location to another, including distances, half- and quarter-turns.

In person, students should have a clear view of the Challenge.
Online, the teacher will share their screen in a virtual space; students will use Jamboard.

Google Slide Deck with challenges and teacher prompts in presenter notes (Appendix A)
In-class version: 10 square tiles per student (same colour)
- If possible, use magnetic tiles with a metal cookie sheet. This will be easier for students.
- Online version: Jamboard with the different challenges (Appendix B).

Provide students with square tiles or access to the Jamboard
Inform students they will be playing a game that will challenge them to transform one shape into another by moving square tiles.
Show Image 1A to the class and invite students to recreate it.
- If using Jamboard, students will see Image 1A already constructed.
- When everyone is ready, share Image 1B, alongside the Image 1A.
- Ask students to imagine how they could make the new shape by moving only one square on the original image.
- Before students make any moves on their own, invite students to use positional language to describe how they would make the transformation.
Repeat with Image 2A and 2B, etc. As the challenge increases, so too does the number of moves required to complete the challenge.
Have students find the minimum number of moves to transform Shape A to Shape B each time.

Are students visualizing the moves in their mind? Are they gesturing while visualizing?
What kind of positional language are students using?

Students practice flips, rotations and translations using shapes on a grid.