MMSD Mathematics Content Standards for Geometry Grades 6-8
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Wisconsin’s Model Academic Standards (WMAS) Standard C: Geometry, 1998 (p. 8)
Students in Wisconsin will be able to use geometric concepts, relationships and procedures to interpret, represent, and solve problems.
Geometry and its study of shapes and relationships is an effort to understand the nature and beauty of the world. While the need to understand our environment is still with us, the rapid advance of technology has created another need—to understand ideas communicated visually through electronic media. For these reasons, educated people in the 21st century need a well-developed sense of spatial order to visualize and model real world problem situations.
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (PSSM) Geometry, 2000 (pp. 232-239)
Instructional programs from pre-kindergarten through grade 12 should enable all students to:
Students should come to the study of geometry in the middle grades with informal knowledge about points, lines, planes, and a variety of two- and three-dimensional shapes; with experience in visualizing and drawing lines, angles, triangles, and other polygons; and with intuitive notions about shapes built from years of interacting with objects in their daily lives.
In middle-grades geometry programs based on these recommendations, students investigate relationships by drawing, measuring, visualizing, comparing, transforming, and classifying geometric objects. Geometry provides a rich context for the development of mathematical reasoning, including inductive and deductive reasoning, making and validating conjectures, and classifying and defining geometric objects. Many topics treated in the Measurement Standard for the middle grades are closely connected to students’ study of geometry.