Imagine that this continues until the thousand students have followed the pattern with the thousand lockers. A teacher lesson plan is provided. Includes directions for building magic squares, definitions, discussion of some special properties of magic squares, a Java applet, and links to other magic square Web sites. This unit for grades 4 through 6 uses tangrams to compute the area of polygons without formulas, introducing the terms congruent and similar. Links to other tangram resources on the Web are also provided.
Students then revisit the activity, look for patterns, and write the answer algebraically.
On the three lefthand stones, facing the center, stand three of the people. The other three people stand on the three righthand stones, also facing the center. The center stone is not occupied. Everyone must move so that the people originally standing on the righthand stepping stones are on the lefthand stones, and those originally standing on the lefthand stepping stones are on the righthand stones, with the center stone again unoccupied. A teacher lesson plan is provided.