45. Back to School Series: Team Building Activities with Pentominoes

Brittany 0:00

Hey Ellie, do you have a favorite activity you love to use on the first days of school?

Ellie 0:06

I do. I have a favorite team building activity that I used to use for years. The students loved it. And I loved how much I learned about the students in just one class period.

Brittany 0:18

Wow, that sounds like a great activity. Welcome to the teaching Toolbox Podcast. I'm Brittany, and I'm here with Ellie.

Ellie 0:27

Hello.

Brittany 0:28

Today we're gonna talk about using team building activities using pentominoes. If you aren't a math teacher and think this episode won't be for you, hold on. Pentominoes are great for non math classes too. So tune in as we explore all the benefits of using pentominoes, especially at the start of the year.

Ellie 0:51

So just in case anyone isn't sure about what pentominoes are, pentominoes are shapes that are made by joining five squares together. And the pent part of it means five and domino means lord or master. So you are the lord and master of the five squared pieces. And there are 12 different pentominoes that can be made in this way. So this activity seems to be very simple. You just take the 12 pentominoes and fit them together to make a rectangle that fits in a given frame. As the pentominoes are fit together, there can't be any gaps between them and they can't overlap each other. That's it. No math calculations are required. No specific math skills are needed. So the activity can be used at any grade level and in any subject area. I typically have students work in groups of three or four as they're doing this so they can bounce ideas off of each other. And maybe when one person gets frustrated, another can take a different approach. So we usually spend about 30 minutes on this team building activity. We take just a few minutes to explain and model what no gaps or overlaps actually means so that everybody's clear about that and then get into the groups and go. And believe it or not, most groups do not finish this activity during the given time. They really, really want to, and they end up walking out the door wanting to come back to do it some more or just stay for a while. And then throughout the year, they always ask about working on the activity during downtime, during fast finisher time, during study halls throughout the year - they just they're really engaged by it and challenged by it.

Brittany 2:37

That does sound like a good activity. As an added bonus, this activity allows for natural differentiation. If there are students who complete the activity, they can be challenged to find a new way to fit the pentominoes on a different size frame, like a 10 by 6 frame instead of the 12 by 5 frames that they start with.

Ellie 2:59

In I don't even know how many years I had maybe two groups that actually did get finished and needed a different frame. Challenging.

Brittany 3:11

So when did you typically use this activity with your students?

Ellie 3:14

I usually did this on the first or second day of math classes. Because I guess the first day I probably did like getting to know you, making sure I knew their names.

Brittany 3:24

Yeah.

Ellie 3:24

So usually first or second day. And I found that I learned so much about my students with this. And I mean, honestly, it's a great activity for any time of the year. I just found it beneficial on the first days because it immediately engaged students in math class. And it gave me the opportunity to observe the students and learn so much about them in a very short time period. You can learn things like how do students approach tasks? What is their problem solving process? How do they interact with other people? How well do they communicate with their group? And you can learn a little bit about what their personalities are like also, for example, who tries to take charge right away and say, This is how we're doing it. Here's like, give me the pieces, who just sits back and watches and listens. And then maybe when somebody else gets frustrated immediately has an idea because they've been going over in their mind, which student decides to persevere and keep trying and not give up which students do give up easily and just kind of say, okay, you can you can work on it, I'll just watch. And then it also tells us who has a good sense of spatial awareness. This activity is very different from a typical math calculation, type of activity. So there may be students who struggle with other math concepts, but they shine with this activity, and they're a little more willing to share their ideas because they feel like they're on a level playing field. And it's a task that is equally intimidating to all students. You know, because it's not really intimidating. It's just that equally frustrating might be the better way to say it.

Brittany 4:59

Yeah. Another pentomino activity you can do is to break the students into small groups of two or three individuals, and have them try to determine what the pentominoes shapes are prior to working with them. So just before doing this activity, maybe they spend a day trying to, or class period trying to figure out what all the pentominoes shapes are, before they actually start working with them. I would do this first before doing those pentominoes activities.

Ellie 5:31

And how how would they figure that out?

Brittany 5:33

I usually gave them big graph paper, like one inch size graph paper and had them draw them out on those.

Ellie 5:42

Okay, so they could just kind of sketch it out, see what seems to fit and include five squares. And then if that didn't work, they could erase it and try again.

Brittany 5:51

Yeah,

Ellie 5:52

Did they typically figure out all 12 of them?

Brittany 5:55

Most groups usually got somewhere between 7 and 10 figured out. They often had a duplicate on there that they had just transformed in some way, and didn't realize that it was a duplicate. And I would only usually have maybe one group get all 12.

Ellie 6:18

I like that idea. I never did that.

Brittany 6:20

Pentominoes can have loads of other benefits for you as a teacher. They spark engagement. They're hands on interactive activities that engage students more deeply than traditional lectures, making the learning experience more enjoyable and effective. They introduce mathematical concepts. Pentominoes can introduce mathematical concepts such as symmetry, transformations like rotation, reflection, and area which you can build on in future lessons. And they help with classroom management. engaging in activities like this can help establish a positive classroom environment, and set the tone for cooperative learning which can improve overall classroom management. And last but not least, they're fun and creative. Incorporating games and puzzles into your teaching adds an element of fun and creativity, which can make students more enthusiastic about learning math, or any subject. I'll always remember a student walking out of class saying that was the best math class I've ever had.

Ellie 7:27

They are fun. I want to go play with them right now. In addition to the teacher benefits of using pentominoes, using them in your classroom offers numerous benefits for students beyond the team building and communication. And we may have already touched on some of these. But we'll look at a couple again a few ways that using pentominoes benefits students include working with spatial reasoning skills. Working with pentominoes enhances student's ability to visualize and manipulate shapes, which is crucial for geometry and many other areas of math. And it's interesting, so many times students wouldn't realize or think about the fact that they could flip it over and use the pentomino. You know, actually flip it turn it. The flipping was the part that they really would not do. They'd be like, Am I allowed to turn this over?

Brittany 8:18

Yeah, exactly.

Ellie 8:20

Using pentominoes helps them practice their problem solving skills. Figuring out how to fit all the pentominoes into the given rectangle requires strategic thinking, and perseverance, helping students develop their problem solving abilities. They also have to use critical thinking skills, they need to think critically about how each piece fits with the others, think about rotations and reflections. And that helps to foster deeper cognitive engagement. And it really helps with collaboration. The group activity encourages students to share ideas, listen to others, work together toward a common goal, and in general improves their collaborative skills right off the bat at the beginning of the year.

Brittany 9:01

They also use mathematical communication. Students learn to articulate their thought processes and reasoning, which enhances their mathematical communication skills. They're using math words, in math class. They recognize patterns. By identifying patterns and symmetries in the pentominoes, it helps students develop a keener sense of pattern recognition, which is an important skill in math.

Ellie 9:32

I think it's one of the math practices in Common Core math, as are some of these others.

Brittany 9:37

Yes, they get to practice persistence and resilience. The challenge of fitting all the pieces without gaps or overlaps, encourages students to persist through trial and error, developing resilience and a growth mindset. And that is something we all need.

Ellie 9:55

Absolutely. And I really think I don't want to say students aren't persistent anymore, or as persistent as they used to be. But I think activities like this really do help to develop that. They don't feel like giving up quite as easily and they persist sometimes without really realizing that they're doing it. So it's kind of strengthening their persistence muscles.

Brittany: 10:17

Yes, yep. And lastly, they get to use fine motor skills. Manipulating the pentominoes can help improve fine motor skills, which are important for handwriting and other classroom tasks.

Ellie: 10:30

There are many more pentominoes activity possibilities. I had a book full of pentominoes challenges, but this particular one is a great one to start with. I do have a blog post about this activity, which links to a free pentominoes download, so you can download cut and laminate and use them in your classes. And we'll link that post in the show notes.

Brittany: 10:52

If you received a great first day of school idea to add to your teaching toolbox. Please let us know by sharing a review with us. We'd love your feedback. Just hit the stars on your app or leave a few words. We'd be thrilled to hear what you think. Until next time,

Ellie: 11:12

bye