Lesson Four:

Making Shapes

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Objective: The objective of this assignment is to have students demonstrate a visual understanding of shapes in everyday life using the tangrams and then a more detailed understanding of basic shapes such as triangles, circles and squares.

Grade: Three/ Four

Length of Lesson: 1 hour

GCO: Students will demonstrate spatial sense and apply geometric concepts, properties, and relationships.

Related SCOs:

·        4E5: find all possible composite figures that can be made from a given set of figures

Materials:

·        Tangrams

·        Paper

·        Pencil

·        The Story of the Tangram  

Procedure:

·        The teacher will begin by reading the story of the tangram to the class (see attached).

·        Students will be put into pairs and given sets of tangrams

·        They will then be instructed to construct a shape that is seen in their everyday lives (an easy example of this would be to make a house or a boat) and trace it onto paper.

·        The students will then be asked to trade their tracing with their partners and have their partners try to construct the same shape with the tangrams.

·        This activity can be done a few times with students coming up with different shapes seen in the community and then they can move onto more complicated and detailed designs if they finish early or would like to do further experimentation before the second part of the activity starts.

·        Students will be asked to see what kinds of shapes they can make by combining two triangles, a square and a triangle, a square and two triangles, etc.

·        The class will then make a table of the different combinations. The students are encouraged to come up with additional combinations beyond the teachers suggestions and voluntarily present them to the class.

·        Once the tangram activity has been completed students will be asked to construct more KWL charts about circles, squares and triangles so that as a class it can be decided what the students wish to know about these shapes.

·        The individual shape KWL charts will be posted alongside the broader geometry KWL chart and will serve as a guide of topics chosen by the students for the teacher to cover before the end of the unit. 

Evaluation: Students may show selected combinations to the class voluntarily and have the class try to recreate the same shapes with their own set of tangrams. The teacher should be watching for the level of involvement of students and monitor their participation levels. The teacher should walk around the room and see how the students are dong with this activity and then at the end of the class ask them questions about the tangrams.

Inclusion Strategies:

Hearing Impaired: Visual aids will be used for those students who are hearing impaired and handouts will be given with instructions for the lesson. The hearing impaired student will be paired with a non-hearing impaired classmate and class discussion points will be written on the chalkboard for all students to see.

Visually impaired:  Visually impaired students will be paired with a student who is not visually impaired.  These students will be given the instructions orally.  These students will be able to know what is going on in the class discussions through hearing. The visually impaired student will also be provided with models of the shapes in question so that they can feel the shape and make judgments about the properties that they feel. They can also feel the tangram shapes and describe them to their partner.

Students of English as a second language:  Students where English is a second language should be provided with lots of visual support, as with students with hearing impairment.