Applying Van Hiele's Theory to Polyhedrons Module

Abstract

Various students' ability on understanding geometry leads to the poorest of learning in the class. A learning module is one of the ways to deal with diversity. Furthermore, the experts trust that van Hiele's theory of learning is effective in geometry learning, such as polyhedrons. This article describes how to design a learning module that implements van Hiele's theory of geometry learning. This article tells the validity of the module as well. The module was developed by Plomp's model. Based on preliminary research step, the module was designed into five sections. Following van Hiele's theory of geometry learning, each section of the module contains five learning activities, these are the inquiry phase, guided-orientation phase, explication phase, free-orientation phase, and integration phase. In the inquiry phase, students meet with cases related to their daily life, such as gifts pack for boxes, material cloth for tents, the volume of an aquarium, or volume of solid chocolate. Then, guided-orientation phase offers some activities which build up polyhedron concepts. This phase is fraught with processes such as observing, copying pictures, drawing geometry objects, calculating, cutting, folding, or finding a formula. In explication phase, students construct concepts from the previous phase. This phase contains explanations about the polyhedron concepts that presented in fill-in-blank statements. The second last phase is free orientation, which serves a chance to students for doing other complex tasks or applying the concepts in tasks. The tasks are directly related to the concepts that students gained from explication. The last is integration which students play games related to the concepts or solve problems without a clue. Based on expert validation, the module was confirmed as a valid learning resource.