Wednesday 2 November 2016

FORM: What are protractors like?

We have been exploring the properties of 2D shapes and the types of angles they have and why. 

To help us explore their connections, we used the Key Concept: Form to examine a protractor.

We used the think-pair-share routine to record what we notice when we look at a protractor. 

Some fascinating observations and wonderings were made:


Look at and listening in to what each child observed was also a great informal assessment to get a picture of who might need support in using them to measure angles in polygons. 


As PYP teachers, we often overlook the power of the key concept 'Form' especially when they get to Year 6, but 'Form' is really powerful and can be used for important understandings to emerge in children's minds.


After sharing with our partner, we then shared our observations as a whole class:



We then shared some wonderings we had and want to find out about:


We then drew some different sorts of angles (acute, obtuse, reflex etc) and experimented with different ways we can use a protractor to measure their sizes.

Giving children the opportunity to draw and measure their own angles rather than being fed a worksheet of angles to measure allows their thinking to deepen and allows them to explore what curiosities they might be harbouring. It also allows them to explore and make their own discoveries. Giving children ownership of their own learning, as we know, is key to authentic and meaningful learning to occur. 

Some samples:




In sharing, some of us shared our how they were trying to create a strategy to measure reflex angles.  They felt it was difficult with a semi-circle protractor.

We used this wondering as a whole class to find out.  After a few minutes of partners thinking of strategies, we shared two.

The first, the child felt would work best if the reflex angle was closer to a straight angle:



So what if the angle is not close to the straight angle? What other strategy could we use?

We drew reflex angles with our partners and had some time coming up with possible strategies. Of those created, we felt the following was the most effective:



1 comment:

  1. This sounds great! It also looks like you have some deep thinkers in your class. Did you have to prompt or prod them with their observations and wonderings? I have a class this year that loves to be spoon fed information--tough crowd.

    ReplyDelete

What do you think? ...........