Math: 3D Shapes Who Am I Activity

I found this lesson in a great book,  Math and Nonfiction by Jamee Petersen.  On the first day of introducing the lesson, we read the book Cubes, Cones Cylinders and Spheres by Tana Hoban.  We talked about the examples in the book and all the other places we see these shapes in our own lives.  I gave them each a paper lunch bag with the homework instructions typed onto it.

On the following morning as the students arrived, I wrote a note on the chalkboard asking students to put their bags at their seats, but not to share the contents with anyone.  I had extra bags for students who did not bring any items.

At the beginning of the lesson, I read the clues for the items in my own bag to model I expected of them for this lesson.  They had fun trying to guess the items in my bag. After setting some criteria and talking about what their clues had to include, I sent them off to write their own clues.

This is M's first clue and item.  He focused on the tennis balls inside the container.

I am fuzzy and I am green.  You can hit me.  I love aces.

What shape am I?  What am I?

I am black.  You can keep balls inside me.  I am clear.   I have

a flat face.  What shape am I?  What am I?

I chose this example because this student is a reluctant writer and to see him write this much on his own and take this risk made me so happy.  

 I have 9 spaces on the outside.  And it have a lot of colours on it.  What shape am I. 

 And it have 6 faces too.

I love this one because I love bugles.  Yummy. The kids had a hard time with this one, but mostly because I don't think they eat them that often.

 I am a toy that can transform.  I am like a ball.  I have o faces.

 I am something that is a circle.  Some people put water in me.

I am from the house center.  What am I?

I have a circle on my top and a point on my bottom.  I have been used

to hold ice cream and taste delicious.  What am I?

At the end of the lesson, we formed a sharing lesson.  Each person chose their favourite clue and item and shared it with the class.  The class then had to guess the object.  They liked this so much that they didn't want it to end.  So then we broke into smaller groups and gave students the opportunity to share another one of their clues.

Math: Geometry Problem Solving

We continue to have a great time in math this term.  The kids have been exploring 3D objects through sorting them into groups according to one attribute (e.g. these all have 4 sides), building towers and looking for these shapes in the real world.  When we work with 2D shapes, we also sort them according to one attribute and also replicate objects and create other shapes using shape materials such as pattern blocks and tangrams.  We still do problem solving on a regular basis.  Here is a geometry related problem that we completed recently.

There are 3 shapes in a bag.  The total number of sides is 13.  What could the shapes be?

What I like about this problem is that it allows the children to demonstrate their knowledge of 2 dimensional shapes and there are many possible outcomes.

The kids organize their thinking in many different ways.  It is another thing I love about problem solving.  We almost always include a debrief or sharing time at then end of a problem solving lesson.  We ask kids to share their strategies.  Sometimes we let anyone share.  Other times, we target specific kids to share a strategy that we think could support other students.  Throughout the year, students develop quite a repertoire of strategies that they are comfortable using.

Some used equations with the shape name written underneath.

Other children created equations, but instead of numbers drew the shapes.

Others chose to "act it out" with pattern blocks and then trace the blocks onto the page.

Some kids asked me the name of ten sided and thirteen sides shape so they could use them in their equations.  Thanks to google we had some fun trying to pronounce some of their names.

This student, used equations and then the initial letter of each shape underneath to show which shape he was referring to.

Math- Geometry- 3D Shapes

Geometry is one of the topics we are working on this term in math.  I like to start with three dimensional shapes first.  While our student teacher was doing her two week practicum at the beginning of January, we sorted three dimensional objects.  We also created three dimensional shapes out of a variety of materials such as plasticine, gumdrops and skewers and marshmallows and toothpicks.

This challenge that we did last week, was to build a castle using prisms, pyramids, cones and cylinders.  The students worked in small groups to complete their castles.  Once done, they were asked to draw their castle in their math journals and create a table to show what shapes they used and how many of each.

One group created an addition equation for the number of three dimensional shapes they used.  I liked the connection they made to other math we have been working on.
It looked like this:
16 prisms +  4 cubes + 6 cylinders + 2 cones = 28 shapes.