Quadrilateral Sorts

I work for a district where they believe fourth grade math should begin with geometry...seriously I don't understand it!  Have you ever tried to teach brand new fourth graders how to use a protractor, introduce them to the vocabulary they have never heard before all at the beginning of the year!?!

But we must follow the rules, so we trudge on through these CCS.  Last week we worked on sorting quadrilaterals, again Learnzillion.com came to my aid a few times.  I wanted to share an activity my students completed for this skill, hopefully you will pin it and use it when you teach geometry in the spring :)



I gave each student a sheet of blank paper and asked them to draw a quadrilateral using their protractor. Students then cut out their shapes (they folded their papers into four boxes before drawing their shapes).  Teams then drew a large Venn Diagram on a large post-it note, I seriously LOVE these and love that my BBB Joanne shared them with me!  Teams then sorted all of their quadrilaterals by the team's guidelines.





Many of my students struggle with identifying different types of lines within a shape and I saw this even more during this activity.  Many of the teams sorted by angles or regular or irregular polygons, none of the teams sorted by lines.  The next day's lesson focused on identifying all attributes of the quadrilaterals to reinforce the skills.



2 comments

  1. Do you have to follow a specific order for all of your math strands? In Ontario, we make our own long range plans that have the order that works for us for all subjects. :) Are we spoiled?
    -Lisa
    Grade 4 Buzz

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  2. We're the same as Canada it seems - We get to choose what we teach, when we teach it! Which has its good points and bad points. Good - quite obvious really. Teachers are the ones choosing what to teach when their kids need it. Bad - you can get caught up with things that the kids find harder, making coverage really difficult. HOWEVER, here in New Zealand, we have a two year progress expectation, so the kids have two years to reach the next expectation, rather than one. This as well has good and bad points! - If the kids stay in the same school then they are usually fine, but if they change schools, then they generally miss stuff out because each school is its own autonomous unit.

    Erin
    The E-Z Class

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