Students investigate how rotations, reflections, and translations can prove figures are congruent while creating a tessellation that fits together exactly. In a fast Pattern Lab kickoff, they use tiles or digital tools to test movement sequences, then work in groups to build and explain a design for a mini exhibition booklet or poster set. The experience connects math to art through a museum educator’s pattern study and gives students practice with communication, collaboration, persistence, and revision as they prepare for the Congruence Celebration Walkabout.

Students will verify through hands-on and digital experiments that rotations, reflections, and translations preserve side lengths, angle measures, and parallel lines, and use that evidence to prove figures in a tessellation are congruent. They will describe clear sequences of transformations that show how one figure maps onto another and explain why those moves make a pattern fit together exactly. Students will collaborate to design, revise, and present a tessellation display, using peer feedback to strengthen both their mathematical explanations and teamwork. Students will communicate their thinking during the walkabout and in their booklet or poster by naming transformation sequences and reflecting on listening, persistence, and shared decision-making.

Students create quick draft tessellations during the kickoff using pattern tiles or digital tools, along with brief written or oral descriptions of the rotation, reflection, or translation sequences that make the designs fit exactly. As they revise, each group develops a display piece that includes a final tessellation, labeled congruent figures, and a short explanation showing how one figure matches another through a sequence of moves. By the end, the class produces a mini exhibition booklet or poster set featuring each group’s tessellation, a simple transformation sequence, and one teamwork highlight from the project. During the Congruence Celebration Walkabout, students also use sticky-note feedback as a shared product that documents identified transformation sequences and evidence of careful listening, persistence, or collaboration.

Open with a Pattern Lab Kickoff where small groups use pattern blocks, tracing paper, or a simple digital tiling tool to build a quick tessellation that fits together with no gaps or overlaps. Invite a museum educator or use images of quilts, mosaics, and cultural artworks to spark a short noticing routine, asking students to find congruent figures and name possible rotations, reflections, or translations they see. Each group then shares one sequence of moves that makes its design work and records it on a sticky note for a class chart of transformation ideas. Close by introducing the challenge: create a tessellation that proves how shapes remain congruent through a sequence of transformations and later explain that sequence to visitors during a walkabout.

Host a Congruence Celebration Walkabout where each group displays its tessellation booklet or poster set like a mini museum exhibit for classmates, families, and the visiting museum educator. Students give a brief explanation of how one figure maps onto another using a sequence of rotations, reflections, and translations, and point out one teamwork highlight from the week. Guests participate in a gallery walk by leaving sticky notes that name one transformation sequence they notice and one example of careful listening, persistence, or collaboration. After the walkabout, groups review the feedback and add one final reflection card to their display.