The promotion of spatial imagination through the active use of cube structures (PDF)

Examination Thesis from the year 2007 in the subject Didactics - Mathematics, grade: 1,0, , language: English, abstract: By teaching basic geometric knowledge and skills, geometry lessons make an important contribution to the development of the child's abilities and intellectual development, which enable him or her to participate in social life and to explore the world around him or her. This is because the environment is predominantly spatially structured, so that the geometric shapes and arrangements that surround us must first be understood and penetrated so that we can find our way around and orient ourselves in it. In this context, the promotion of spatial imagination through geometric content plays a particularly important role.

The spatial imagination as the ability to orientate oneself in space, to reproduce spatial conditions in the imagination and to operate with them mentally is not available to children from birth. Therefore, it must be developed and promoted accordingly.
If sufficient support is not provided in geometry lessons, learning difficulties in many school areas can often be the result. The effects on activities of daily life would also be devastating: catching a ball, sorting dishes into the cupboard or crossing a street are already tasks that demand spatial imagination.

With this knowledge of the necessity of promoting spatial imagination through geometric content in the classroom, it is incomprehensible why geometry lessons to this day are often limited to a few hours before the holidays. Geometry lessons can build on the children's geometric knowledge and skills from their pre-school years. From this, the principle can also be derived that the promotion of spatial imagination should always be based on actions with concrete material, since ideas about objects and their movements can only develop when they have been handled in an active way. In addition, a positive attitude towards mathematics can be conveyed through this "play character". Pupils who are particularly weak in arithmetic can be motivated for arithmetic content through a sense of achievement by solving geometric tasks in an active way.