51ºÚÁÏ

This is an activity that students across a large age range seem to enjoy…

It involves setting it them as a CHALLENGE.
A challenge to find ALL the triangles in a particular diagram made up of different regions.

This can be a full lesson, a series of lessons or simply a lesson starter depending on how you present it to them.

It can also be set as an individual, pairs or table activity.
It could be made competitive between individuals, pairs or tables.
It could form part of a homework?
It could form a part of a class display.

FULL LESSON
It’s main aim will be to get the students to work in a methodical/systematic way.
You could give it them and see what they can achieve on their own before showing how they can work smarter in order to find ALL the solutions.

There are 50 puzzles to choose from that vary in difficulty so pick the puzzles you think will suitable for your students.

The number of solutions per puzzle are in the 5-99 range.

While it is generally true that the more solutions there are the more systematic/methodical the students have to be, but some of the mid-range ones between say, 20-40 it will be essential.

STARTER OR SHORT ACTIVITY
Pick a suitable puzzle, set a time limit and just ask students to find how many triangles are made up of, perhaps 6 regions or 3 and 4 regions. Consult the ‘Puzzle Analysis grids to help you choose)
For example: Puzzle 28 has 99 triangles hidden it. Perhaps okay for a group to work on but looking at this table you might ask them to find just the 4 region triangles of which there are 15.

Included in the resource
An Introduction PowerPoint (14 slides)
A 50 page PDF (one puzzle per page) with each page having 12 blank diagrams (with guide lines so they can be cut out individually).
A 50 slide PowerPoint showing the solutions.
500+ pieces of CLIP ART (All the BLANK diagrams and individual SOLUTION diagrams) so you can use in your own documents if needed.
A puzzle analysis for each puzzle showing the distribution of the number of regions used per triangle.