Workshop 4: teaching Geometry; visualising, shape attributes and location & direction

Visualising and focusing on shape attributes

Teachers can ask students to visualise a the table from the top and how it looks like. Then students are required to look for other object in the classroom that they can visualise into a shape. They could write the objects into a table. for example

In order to extend their understanding on shape attributes, teachers can teach students by using cooked or uncooked spaghetti:

Spaghetti is a good resources to teach kids in focusing to shape attributes. First, teachers can ask students to make the shape that they had visualised and wrote in the table. Then, teachers can highlight on the shape by asking questions such as"how many sides is there in the triangle?" "what do you think about the size of the sides in the triangle?are they the same?". These could be done with different shapes and the cooked spaghetti can be used for shapes for instance, oval or circle. 

Location & Direction

Firstly, teachers need to introduce to students the concept of right, left, forward and back. This video would be use to introduce the concepts before moving on to the next game:

Tourist map

This is a big map of a tourist spots in a small town located in Malaysia. It was made highly suitable for my Malaysian students since they would be familiar with the name of places, and road's names. Other teachers can just change these to be used in own respective class. The map is big for teachers to put it in front of class.  Teachers could also make the map for each group.

What do you need to play this game:

1.the tourist map

2. a counter for each group to move

how to play this game:

1. students will be divided into groups of four. then, they will choose a counter.

2. The teacher will demonstrates how the game will be played where each group will be a tourist guide and receive a mission to show direction to tourists in order to go to certain tourists spots. for eg:

"show the tourists how to go from Shangri-la Hotel to the garden."

Then, the group will discuss the direction and show to the whole class how they go to the location using their counter. 

3. The teacher starts the game and facilitates the game by scaffolding them using questions such as "where will you turn after that?left or right?"