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This activity is one of a series undertaken by Year 8 students as part of their Geometry unit.
These activities utilize The Geometer’s Sketchpad to explore key aspects of quadrilaterals
and larger polygons.
The activity is based on the Midpoint Quadrilaterals activity from “Exploring Geometry with
The Geometer’s Sketchpad” (Dan Bennett, Key Curriculum Press, 1999)
Phase One involves constructing the figure to be used. See SNotes for details.
Construct a quadrilateral and measure all sides, internal angles.
Connect all the midpoints of the sides, and measure all sides, internal angles.
See completed figure.
In Phase Two, the larger quadrilateral is set to a particular shape (square, rectangle, rhombus,
parallelogram, kite, trapezium, isosceles trapezium, quadrilateral), and the smaller
quadrilateral’s shape is then identified from the key measurements. On an Answer Sheet,
students record the shape of the larger quadrilateral, the shape of the smaller quadrilateral as
identified and the special features of the smaller quadrilateral that enabled the identification
to occur.
A sample completed Answer Sheet is on p.2 of these notes and a sample completed figure is
on p. 3.
General Comments
Students completed this activity very well in general, once they realised that they needed to
evaluate all the information as measured to confirm the identity of the inner quadrilateral.
The most common “fault” observed was that the trapezium the students constructed was an
isosceles trapezium (both non-parallel sides equal in length) rather than a general trapezium
(with one pair of non-equal parallel sides). (Is this due to the fact that the trapezoidal shape
that be drawn in Microsoft Word is an isosceles trapezium?)
SOLUTIONS
Record the type of quadrilateral you have constructed for ABCD, the type of quadrilateral
you have identified for EFGH, and the special features that you used to identify EFGH.
Square Square ALL sides same length, All internal angles 90º
Rhombus Rectangle Opposite sides equal in length, All internal angles 90º
Kite Rectangle Opposite sides equal in length, All internal angles 90º
m BA = 15.0 cm
A G B
m∠BAD = 100° m∠CBA = 109°
m∠FGH = 103°
m GH = 11.7 cm
m F G = 12.5 cm
m A D = 15.5 cm m C B = 15.6 cm
m∠GHE = 7 7° m∠EFG = 7 7° F
H
m HE = 12.5 cm m EF = 11.7 cm
m∠HEF = 103°
m∠DCB = 7 2°
m∠ADC = 7 9°
C
E
D
m D C = 22.7 cm