The van Hiele Phases of Learning in studying Cube Dissection

Spatial sense is an important ability in mathematics. Formula application is very different from spatial concept acquisition. But it is often observed that in schools students learn spatial concepts by memorizing instead of understanding. In the past academic year we had tried out and developed a series of learning activities based on van Hiele’s model for guiding learners to explore the cube and its cut sections. The ideas in origami, and mathematical modelling by manipulative as well as mathematical software are integrated into our study. This paper gives a brief account on our works. We start by presenting a sequence of math-rich learning tasks, followed by some related folding ideas and mathematical background analysis. Finally we round up our paper with a concise discussion on some major elements of our design based on the van Hiele learning phases