Alexis Flanders

Three weeks ago, if you had asked me how I felt about teaching geometry, I would have said I enjoy it. It’s active. It’s visual. It gives students something to move, build, and at times, argue about. It can feel refreshing after long stretches of number work.

However, I don’t think I had fully examined how I was teaching it.

Geometry has often lived at the edges of my planning. Not because I do not value it, and not because I choose it to be that way, but because it is almost always positioned at the end of our pacing guides. When time is constricted, something has to get squeezed. Geometry tends to be flexible enough to take that pressure.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been sitting with that pattern. What does it mean if spatial reasoning consistently receives less sustained attention than computation? What habits are we building in students if geometry becomes a short, energetic unit instead of an ongoing way of thinking?

I kept coming back to my own classroom.

I’ve done my “lost angle” search in a bin of Orbeez. I’ve watched students rebuild circles by collecting angle pieces around the room. I’ve led games where students use their arms to form rays and perpendicular lines. Those lessons were lively and memorable. Students were engaged, smiling, and fully immersed.

And yet, I started asking myself:

• Was engagement enough?
• Were students reasoning deeply, or were they completing tasks wrapped in novelty?
• Who was doing the explaining?
• Who was hanging back?
• What counted as participation in my room?

That realization pushed me to think beyond individual lessons. If I want geometry to feel accessible, I cannot rely on engaging activities alone. I have to design structures that widen entry points. I have to make space for students to explain, revise, and build on each other’s thinking. I have to treat participation as something larger than who speaks the most.

That thinking led me to create a Geometry Toolkit, a simple, teacher-friendly Google Site that brings these ideas together in one place. It includes playful lessons, conversation supports, technology integration, reflection checkpoints, and aligned assessment tools. The goal is not to overwhelm, but to offer practical ways to make geometry more intentional and more inclusive.

Building it clarified something for me. I do not just want students to name shapes or calculate measures. I want them to experience geometry as a way of noticing patterns and structure. I want them to feel comfortable revising their thinking. I want them to see themselves as capable of reasoning, even when they are not yet certain.

The activities I love are still there. The movement is still there. The energy is still there. What has changed is the purpose behind them.

I used to think geometry was a nice change of pace. Now I see it as an opportunity to reshape how my students experience mathematics altogether.

And that feels worth protecting time for.

If you are curious, click to explore the Geometry Toolkit!