Inversions



	Classroom Galleries Galleries of inversions submitted by classes around the world

GALLERIES

ACTIVITY

Teachers who show inversions to their students often find that some students will start making their own inversions, whether or not it was given as an assignment. Many students enjoy trying to make inversions on their own names, or names of friends. I have created this gallery as a place for teachers and students to show their work to each other.

THE GALLERIES

West Washington University. Teacher: Michael Naylor. Fall 2000.

St. Joseph High School. Teacher: Mrs. Mendiola. Winter 2001. Click each inversion to read the student's commentary.

St. James Academy, Montgomery, Alabama. Teacher: Susan Terry. (gallery under construction)

THE ACTIVITY

Show examples of inversions to your class. You can print designs from this web site, or photocopy them out of my book (you have my permission to do so for classroom use). Presenting them on overhead projector works particularly well, since it is easy to flip a transparency to show the symmetry.
Then ask students to create inversions of their own. Most students will want to try their own names. They can try just first names, first and last names, or just last names. For younger students, stick to just first names.
Some students will find this exercise quite difficult. It can help to have students work in pairs, so they can help one another. Of course some names are much harder to invert than others, so students needn't feel like they failed if they can't do their own name. Here are some other words and names they can try:

Names of friends, pets or family members
The name of the school, city, state or country
Names of favorite musicians, TV characters, or other heroes
Titles of favorite books, movies, TV shows, or other works
Names of subjects you are studying
Hobbies, interests or other favorite words

Once students have created their inversions, display them on a bulletin board. You might want to photocopy and reduce them to fit on a single page that everyone can take home. When students know their work will be publicly displayed, they are motivated to do a good job.
If you would like to submit your student work to my Classroom Galleries, create a web page on your school web site that displays each student's work, along with the name of the student and a paragraph written by the student describing what they did. If you need help deciding how to compose and layout your web pages, take a look at the other galleries below. Then email me the URL to your gallery, along with the name of your school, city, state (country), and your name. I'll add it to my list of galleries below.