The purpose of this lesson is to give students practice writing and following precise instructions with straightedge and compass moves as they create interesting designs.

Students attend to precision when they refer to figures in their construction using mathematical terms and labeled points (MP6).

In one activity, the steps students follow will construct a parallel line. This is the first set of instructions they see for lines that do not intersect, but students will come up with another construction to create lines that are parallel after they have learned to construct perpendicular lines.

The patterns in the Launch of the “Make Your Own” activity are used with permission from the author.

If students have ready access to digital materials in class, they can choose to perform all construction activities with the GeoGebra Constructions Tool accessible in the Math Tools or available at https://im612.org/construction-tool. 

Math Community

This is the first exercise that focuses on the work of building a mathematical community. Students have the opportunity to think about what a mathematical community is and to share their initial thoughts about what it looks like and sounds like to do math together in a community.