I don't understand why the vocabulary of geometry (angles, lines, rays etc) is a part of 4th grade and not included in 3rd's geometry. Don't you need to know the vocabulary to understand classifying quadrilaterals? Perhaps I'm completely off base? I'm so incredibly tired and was going to start to plan for next week but that doesn't look like it's going to happen now.
When I taught third grade math I taught geometry vocabulary before I taught my vocabulary unit. It made the unit sooooo much easier.
I call it Shape of the Week Program. Each week I feature a shape. I teach with the definition, a riddle a poem, a story a craft.... It only takes a few minutes a day. Related vocabulary comes up like parallel lines in a square and such.
1956BD, Common Core has removed ALL standards for lines, line segments, rays and angles in third grade. It really doesn't make sense, because otherwise how can you teach how to form a polygon and go from there? I haven't yet tackled this in my math rewrite for the year. My outline says take it out; my brain says we need some lessons even though they don't meet standards...
I start teaching that vocabulary around November with other activities before I start teaching geometry, because we stumbled into this same issue last year. They have understand the attributes of the shapes, but didn't know what parallel meant. VERY frustrating!
It may not be in the CCSS, but I agree the students need to know angles, lines, and parallel in order to classify quadrilaterals. Even though it is a 4th grade standard, I still teach it in third. If they don't know these words then they can't explain how a square and a rhombus are different (or any other comparison). It definitely is backwards!
I have brought up this topic at our grade level meeting and the response was that we will cross that bridge when we come to it. We are moving the geometry chapters around in our textbook to begin geometry by the end of November instead of April in order to give us room to adjust our pacing guide or "add" more skills.
what do you all think about 3rd graders understanding area and perimeter without the background vocabulary, concepts, or skills surrounding, angles, triangles, etc. . .I may be off base but don't you need some prior background knowledge or exposure to these geometric concepts before problem solving area and perimeter?
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10-02-2014, 04:12 PM
Don't you need to know the vocabulary to understand classifying quadrilaterals? Perhaps I'm completely off base? I'm so incredibly tired and was going to start to plan for next week but that doesn't look like it's going to happen now.
