"I flip for reflection, I slide for translation, I turn for rotation in geometry!"

Last week we were introduced to translations, reflections, and rotations. We completed three worksheets in which we had to translate, reflect, and rotate certain shapes. I felt the translations were pretty easy to accomplish. The reflections and rotations were a little harder.

The reflections in which the reflection line did not pass through the shape were not too difficult. However, in the first reflection, the reflection line goes right down the middle of the shape. This confused me at first. I had a hard time imagining how the shape was supposed to reflect and what it would look like. The the part that confused me most was the fact that there were points on both sides of the line. Most reflections I had seen before were simply all points on one side of the line reflecting to the other side. After messing around for a bit, while trying to picture the whole shape reflecting, I realized if I just focused on one original point at a time, the task became much simpler. I would just pick a point, count how many spaces to the reflection line, and then use that same number of spaces to count past the reflection line to plot my reflected point. I would then move on to the next point until I had reflected all points. Taking the reflection one point at a time made the process much more manageable, rather than trying to imagine the whole shape  
                                                                reflecting.


I had a similar experience with rotating the shapes. Initially I had a hard time imaging the rotation of the actual shape. Professor Klassen then showed us the trick of turning the paper. I used this for the first couple rotations. I soon realized, once again, that if I focused on each individual point, rather than the whole shape rotating, the rotation became much more manageable and I no longer need to rotate the paper. Focusing on one point at a time was especially helpful when the shape would cross over into multiple sections of the number graph.

I thought this game here would be great practice for kids to become familiar with translations, reflections, and rotations.

Also, the most helpful thing I encountered all semester was this video here. After watching it, everything just fell into place and made sense.