Exploring The Importance of Shapes in our WorldWe read beautiful books by Tana Hoban. She is a photographer who has published many books containing mathematical and science concepts. Her photos capture real-world shapes, which make it simple for children to find shapes everywhere. As we read her books, the students made comments about how those shapes were in our classroom. We went on a shape hunt in our classroom, sketching objects and their shapes. We counted sides and corners of each shape. We are still pondering the question: does a circle have sides? We also came to the conclusion that most objects in our classroom are rectangular-shaped. We wondered why that was. We will explore these questions further during our Science study about Building Things. However, we did think it would be funny if doors were triangles or circles. It doesn't seem to make sense to use those shapes. What are we Learning About Shapes?We explored the connectedness of shapes through sorting and creating both regular and irregular shapes. The students were given the task of sorting regular pattern blocks into groups. They had to state how they sorted them. There were seven different ways that we came up with: colour, size, number of sides, number of corners, shapes that look alike, shapes that are different, shapes that can be put together to make other shapes (see photo below). Sorting is an important part of our curriculum. It relates to patterning, and later in the grades, to algebra. Students have to be intentional about how they group their shapes, as well as be able to prove to their peers, that their sorting method makes sense. Comparing Regular and Irregular ShapesWe read the story, The Greedy Triangle, by Marilyn Burns. She has written several books about teaching mathematics to children. As an educator, I have referenced her work frequently, as she brings the richness and real-world application to life for our young learners. This story in particular, is an engaging story about how a triangle wants to become other shapes, and in the process, realizes just how much he really likes being a triangle after all. As we read this story, the children were able to use geoboards, with elastics, to create each shape that the triangle became, by adding another side and corner each time. The children learned the names of 4, 5, even 10-sided shapes. They were challenged with creating their own shapes, whether they were a regular or irregular shape. Here are some examples of irregular shapes that students made when reading our Greedy Triangle story. These are irregular pentagons and a hexagon. They still have 5 or 6 sides and corners, yet they do not resemble the typical "regular" shapes with equal or similar sides. Building 3-Dimensional SolidsAfter much exploring and comparing shapes and solids, students were able to build 3-dimensional solids using some new math manipulatives that were purchased through fundraising by parents. Usually in the past, we have used marshmallows and toothpicks, so this was an engaging way for students to build their own 3-dimensional solids, without the junk-food snack! Once they built them, they were to sketch and label them in their math journals. Students found sketching them more challenging; however these sticks and spheres sets, made it easier for them to manipulate and create their shapes with success.
The students created a variety of rectangular and triangular prisms, cubes and pyramids. Some created more complex multi-faced solids. The materials did pose some challenges, as at times, the sticks did not perfectly align with the holes in the connecting spheres. They had to tinker with the materials to make them work. All in all, the students enjoyed their creations, and were able to articulate what shapes they made, based on the shape faces, vertices and edges. They proved just how skilled they were at building and engineering at a junior level.
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May 2017
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