Day 7 of the Mathematics Practice Intensive was on the topic of Geometry. There are many aspects of what qualifies as Geometry including 2D shapes, 3D shapes, angles, transformation, position and orientation.
We began as usual with a Maths Talk strategy. Today's one was Quick Images or Subitising. This is when you display an image of some sort (one that has items that can be counted) and then you take it away after about 3 seconds and the students work out how many objects were in the image. The conversations are very interesting around how students saw the items and then how they worked out how many items there were. The Jo Boaler video below was an excellent example of how you could carry out one of these Maths Talk sessions.
Just like I found with measurement, the strand of geometry is very vocabulary heavy. This will mean ensuring I am using the TIP charts. lots of repetition and perhaps integrating some of it into my Literacy programme...just a thought!
Reading back over my last blog post about measurement I said that I was going to plan a week's worth of workshops and a rich task all about angles and teach it to the whole hub. Success! I did exactly that and so now because angles is also part of the geometry strand I am going to add onto that learning and cover the interior angles of triangles and quadrilaterals with my students.
I was amazed by the amount of online tools that we can use while teaching geometry. I had used a Maths Playground activity this week where the students used a virtual protractor to measure angles. I will be looking at what other tools I can use when we look at the interior angles learning next.
My mind is whirring away at the homework task where we need to bring an integrated maths lesson. Do I link it to my angle teaching and learning somehow or go somewhere else entirely?! Watch this space!
