Doing Geometry gives exercise to the mind and thus develops sharp mental abilities like creative thinking, visual imagination, analytical thinking, precise measurement and spatial sense. It activates both sides of the brain and gives much space for right brain activities.
Knowledge in Geometry opens up avenues of career in civil engineering, surveying field, sports, athletic field, functional food designs, quality quilting, video games and recreational activities. A fundamental knowledge of Geometry is required for doing Calculus courses at the college level. Further, learning the subject enhances the aesthetic sense of a human being and helps him enjoy the shape and beauty of the things around him.
Geometry has various shapes. They are triangle, polygon, square, circle, quadrilateral, pentagon, hexagon, hexagram, trapezium, cube, cuboid, sphere, prism, cone and many more. Students start knowing about these shapes from their primary and pre primary level through various hands on activities. Doing all these shapes is necessary for improving one’s deductive skills, spatial reasoning, problem solving skills and understanding transformations.
At the elementary school level, students indulge in many hands on activities to understand the shapes and sizes of Geometry. They learn the shape of various geometrical objects through perception as in Pizza pie, cookies (circle), tiles on the floor (square), apartment buildings, cell phones (rectangle), sandwich cut in half (triangle), the design on soccer ball (pentagon), ice crystals (hexagon)among various other shapes and sizes.
Small fun activities like using building blocks to find out the hidden shapes, sponge paintings and cutting shapes like circles and squares in a picture chart to understand their dimensions and properties. In 4th Grade, they learn about lines, line segments and rays through drawings. They move on to learn about angles with related terms like acute, obtuse, vertex, circumference, circular arc and a protractor. They start classifying geometric shapes.
In middle school, students learn about rotation, classifying polygons, congruent shapes, constructing quadrilateral, rotational symmetry, finding surface areas and many other topics to know more about geometric shapes. They engage in many interactive activities to get into the depth of these topics and understand Geometry with more clarity.
At the high school level, students learn measurement, plane geometry and the concepts of congruence, similarity and symmetry. They start learning precise definitions and developing proofs. They learn to express geometric properties with equations moving on to modeling with Geometry. At this stage, practice plays a lot of roles in developing geometric proofs with clarity and precision. It is also good to memorize theorems, postulates and axioms learn the subject at the high school level without difficulty.
Thus learning Geometric shapes through elementary, middle and high school grades end up with great visual thinking, spatial understanding and analytical reasoning in students. Hands on experiences, interactive methods and classroom activities like drawings and proving theorems help a student analyze various shapes of Geometry and understand the fundamentals of the subject.
Students who struggle in Geometry classes can contact online Geometry tutors who help them comprehend various shapes with proper examples and lead them through their difficulties in Geometry learning.
Learning geometric shapes and understanding their significance is a fun experience if a student connects them to real world objects and realizes their importance thereby.