Making a Shape Poster Lesson Plan

Making a Shape Poster

Grade Level and Unit: Grade 1, Geometry

Session and Description of Lesson Tasks: Students will sort shape cards into their favorite way. They will glue the shape cards on paper in the way they decided to organize them. They will then label their groups.

Materials needed: Shape cards, glue, paper, markers.

Grouping Decisions: Students will work in pairs.

Learning goals/Objective(s) What are your core ideas for this lesson? What do you intend all students to know and understand? I want students to be able to classify shapes into groups. I want them to be able to identify differences between shapes and be able to explain their reasoning behind why they grouped the shapes the way they did.	Language Objectives? What language will you model during the lesson? What language do you expect to hear during student discourse? Rhombus Hexagon Square Triangle Vertices Circle Oval Shapes
Standards: How do the learning goals relate to the standards? Massachusetts Mathematics Curriculum Standards Geometry, 1.G 1.         Distinguish between defining attributes (e.g., triangles are closed and three-sided) versus non-defining attributes (e.g., color, orientation, overall size); build and draw shapes that possess defining attributes.
Connect and Anticipate: In what ways does this lesson build on students’ previous knowledge? What student strategies and responses do you anticipate? What misconceptions and struggles might students have? Students will build on their previous knowledge of shapes by classifying them into groups. I anticipate the students grouping their shapes based on number of sides. I will be previewing the task with the students beforehand and try and show other ways of sorting. I want students to be able to label the groups they have made and describe why each shape belongs and why other shapes do not belong within groups.  Students may have difficulty with grouping shapes.
Focus Questions Consider what questions you will use to focus on students’ thinking to encourage sense-making and discourse. Launch: To introduce the activity/motivate students. What makes this shape unique? How would you describe this shape? Are there any shapes similar or different? How could you group these shapes? Explore: To assess students’ understanding and to advance their thinking as they work independently, in partners or small group What attributes are students noticing? Can students think of more than one way to sort the shapes? How do students think about the shapes that are most difficult to classify, such as the hexagon? Summary: To facilitate the analysis and synthesis of ideas shared at the end of the lesson How did you group your shapes? Why? Why did you put particular shapes in groups?

Evidence: How will you know what students understand? What evidence will you collect? (If there is an exit task, what will be its focus to inform you instructional next steps?) I will be able to see if students understand by asking them why they came up with the groups they did and having them explain why certain shapes are in groups. I will be collecting this data and writing it down so that I know if I need to cover this concept again in a later lesson. Students will also present their finished posters to the rest of the group and explain their groupings.

Pitfalls and Solutions:

                ELL: There are no students in this group that would fall under this category.

Special Ed.: Students who may have difficulty will be paired with a student that has a better grasp on the subject. Two teachers will also be working with the group to support any students who need help.

Notes and Reflection:  I think this lesson went really well. The students were active and engaged during the presentation and example I gave of the lesson. They participated a lot and had fun while doing the project. Students worked well in groups and were able to come up with great ideas for their grouping of the shapes. One child thought of putting some of the shapes that looked like moons in a “moon shape” category. However many of the students did group their shapes by number of sides or vertices. Next time I would like the students to be more creative when they group their shapes. Also, none of the groups were able to integrate the hexagon into a group; they all made it a separate group. Next time I would give explicit instruction on how to include this shape into a group.