We’ve been focused on all things geometry in the Applicious Classroom these past few weeks! After weeks of test prep and then actual testing, it’s nice to have finally returned to “normal” curriculum and infuse fun back into our block!
Our curriculum outlines that students should be able to distinguish between different quadrilaterals based on their attributes of lines and angles. The problem? As a former second grade teacher, I know these kiddos had no clue about angles or line pairs.
What to do?
Well…First, we set to work on laying the foundation with content specific vocabulary for line pairs. It’s hard to understand that a parallelogram has 2 sets of parallel lines if you don’t know what those are!
We worked to come up with hand motions to solidify the three basic types of line pairs.
Once we understood each type of line, the students came up with hand motions to match thme.
Here’s the 3 we came up with..
Two lines that will never meet..
Lines that meet at a 90 degree angle…
Two lines that cross..
Once we had a handle on those… we moved onto angles.
The kiddos came up with these two gestures…
Awh! They’re just so a-CUTE!
OBTUSE!
We used the same gesture of perpendicular to illustrate a right angle.
Then, it was time to apply this learning to understanding 4 sided polygons.
In second grade, we worked on all different types of polygons, so it was exciting to focus only on Quadrilaterals and the different specific types in this unique group.
We used food to help explore the attributes of trapezoids, squares, parallelograms, rhombus, and rectangles.
To complete this activity, I called out attributes of the quadrilateral and students used the marshmallows and pretzels to build their shape.
Talk about a perfect formative assessment opportunity! As students built their shapes, I circled around and made notes of the kiddos who struggle to create the correct quadrilateral.
During our math center time, I pulled those kiddos to my small group to work on understanding of our key terms and the attributes of each shape.
Now bring on that Friday!
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