I love starting the school year teaching geometry.  I use it as a hook to get my students interested in math.  Not that they aren’t.  But often, kids come into class thinking that math is all about adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing.  I know this because it’s the first thing I ask during day 1 math.

So I kick off the math school year in geometry.  It’s visual, hands-on, and fun.  All math is…as students will discover through the course of the year.  But geometry hooks them.

So as we’re studying geometry using geoboards or building polygons with straws, I sneak in all the math vocabulary.  Things like parallel lines, congruent shapes, or right angles.  It’s easy to learn this if it’s in the context of something fun and creative.

I’ll re-visit geometry several times throughout the school year and keep adding on to what we have learned.  But when I feel the students are ready, I introduce The Important project.  They’re now going to get an opportunity to write what they learned about all the properties of shapes.  Sometimes I stick with just polygons, 2-dimensional shapes.  Sometimes I throw in polyhedrons, 3-dimensional shapes.

I begin by reading the book, The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown.  It gives the students the format of the assignment.  For example, it starts with:  The most important thing about a spoon is that you eat with it.  It is like a little shovel, you hold it in your hand, you can put it in your mouth, it isn’t flat, it’s hollow, and it spoons things up.  But the important thing about a spoon is that you eat with it.

Once they get the idea, I have them to choose 4-5 shapes we’ve been studying and write their own Important Book.  They get to add illustrations, as well.  But it really gets them to reflect on the properties of these shapes. Which ones have parallel lines?  Which have acute angles…and how many?  Which are made up of faces? etc.  It’s a great way to reinforce the vocabulary.

They may write something like:  The important thing about a triangle is that it has exactly three straight sides.  It has three verticies.  Sometimes it has three acute angles.  Sometimes it has one right angle.  It can never have more than one obtuse angle.  It is a closed figure.  But the important thing about a triangle is that it has exactly three straight sides.

So what do you think is the most important thing about a square?