In this activity, students choose a picture and use all seven Tangram pieces to fill in the outline. They work with concrete Tangram pieces first and then use an applet that allows them to slide, flip, and turn the pieces.

In this activity, students choose a picture and use all seven Tangram pieces to fill in the outline. They work with concrete Tangram pieces first and then use an applet that allows them to slide, flip, and turn the pieces. They describe and visualize what figures look like when they are transformed through rotations or flips or are put together or taken apart in different ways. This activity helps students develop their spatial memory and spatial visualization skills, to recognize and apply transformations, and to become more precise in their use of vocabulary about space. (author/sw)