A Geometry Scavenger Hunt

Last year on the first day of my Geometry for Teachers course, I decided to have the pre-service teachers do a geometry scavenger hunt.  What does one do on a geometry scavenger hunt?  Find geometric objects, of course.  The groups were required to document the object they found with a picture.  Then they had to describe the campus location of the object and how they knew the object met the criteria for the required geometric shape.

In the #Math261 course last fall, there were only 5 students, 2 groups of scavengers.  This year I have 17 students so I formed 5 scavenger groups.  I thought it would be easier for the students if I created a template in Google Slides, one geometric figure per slide.  Then they could just add their pictures and descriptions to the slides as they hunt.

I used a random group generator to create the five groups, 4 groups of 3 and 1 group of 4 (one student added the class late so only 16 students at the time).  It was definitely more fun because there are more students in the course.  I loved randomly putting them in groups so that they can get to know their classmates on the first day.  It is a fun activity and I will continue to use it on the first day of class. I think that the Google Slides template worked well also. 

The best part is that I actually enjoyed “grading” the results.  That is pretty impressive as my students know that I am not a huge fan of grading.  One bonus is that I got to know the students a little better when I graded—this wasn’t something that I was expecting.  This group of pre-service teachers is creative, funny, thorough, and competitive.  We are going to have a lot of fun in class this semester!  Here is an Adobe Spark video of some of my favorite slides.