I recently saw a photo of a delicious apple pie with a beautiful interwoven lattice top crust. I thought this kind of pie would make for a fun Shapegram. Little did I know that drawing a lattice is incredibly challenging.

You see, making an interwoven lattice pattern in Google Slides is hard because rectangles can’t be in front of and behind each other at the same time.

I tried different approaches to creating interwoven strips. I finally settled on a technique that's detailed in the Lattice Pie Crust Shapegram's document. It involves adding an additional rectangle to give the illusion that strips of crust are weaving over and under each other.

Level = Remarkable Red
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Before students attempt the challenge, show them a picture of the pie and discuss drawing it. I inserted the picture in Google Slides to make it easy for you. I extended the pattern on Slide 2, which might lead to a discussion about how to achieve the woven look by layering rectangles.

The Lattice Pie Crust Zipper has a PDF teachers can download to display or print. This same poster is provided inside the Zipper document itself.

Caption This

Like all Zippers, the Lattice Pie Crust document has a silly comic in the right margin. Before students use that document, how about doing a quick "Caption This" activity?

Give students a link to make a copy of the Caption This Google Slides document. Students can think of something clever and type into the speech bubbles. Then, they can download it as an image and share their comics, perhaps on a Padlet or in a collaborative presentation.

Let's see if your students can top the silly caption I came up with. 😜

More Pie

There's another pie Zipper, which is less challenging to draw. The Slice of Pie Zipper is drawn with 3 rectangles, 5 ovals, 2 triangles, 2 round same-side corner rectangles, and 1 wave. Its document highlights the shapes used and contains an animation showing how the shapes come together.

Level = Growing Green
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Featured Lesson

The picture in the Turkey Lesson is drawn with 17 shapes and 7 lines. Unlike most Shapegrams, this picture is outlined in black. The tutorial video shows how to use the Arc shape to draw wings and tail feathers.

Level = Progressing Purple
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Bluesky

In addition to being on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and X, Shapegrams is on Bluesky. The username is shapegrams.bsky.social.

I’ve seen a lot of educators join Bluesky lately. The #EduSky hashtag is full of resources and discussions.

Whichever platform you end up using to follow Shapegrams, you’ll see featured Lessons, highlighted Zippers, helpful resources, and timely teaching tips. And puns. You’ll see lots of puns.

P.S. I’ve got my own Tony Vincent account on Bluesky. It’s tonyvincent.bsky.social.

A Quick Joke

I'll conclude this update with a joke:

Knock, knock!
Who's there?
Norma Lee.
Norma Lee who?
Norma Lee I don't eat this much pie!

Smiles from Iowa,
Tony