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Beginnings of geometry
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Primary school teaching of shapes and space should be drawn from commonplace objects and involve related activities. It is certainly not a chalk-and-talk topic, says, ANAND NAIR in this series on maths.
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BY THE time a child starts in class 1 of primary school, a thinking parent would have laid the foundations for learning about Space and Shape in school. The professional teacher must then get the sequence of concepts in this topic right, to be successful. In years 1 to 6 of Primary school the order of events is as follows:
Box, ball and tin shapes. Add hill shapes to stretch the child's imagination.
Roundness and flatness.
Two-dimensional shapes: Rectangles, triangles and circles.
Faces, edges and corners.
Angles: full turn, half turn, quarter turn. Right angles and symmetry.
Degrees: Acute and obtuse angles, Equilateral, isosceles and right-angled triangles. Circles, Parallel and perpendicular lines, Quadrilaterals.
This topic is not about learning the properties of any shape by rote; it is about the ability to visualise shapes and knowing how shapes and angles fit together, by experience. Definitely not a chalk-and-talk topic.
Let us look at some of the activities that can help a child in Primary school.
Year 1
Hold up some everyday objects (Examples - matchbox, soup cube, carton, tile, orange, lemon, ball, tins of various sizes, lengths of thick stick, pieces of chalk, candle, spinning top, peanut wrap that is cone shaped etc) in front of the class. Ask children to give the non-technical names of the shapes of these objects.
Ask children to roll tins and balls and tell the teacher the difference. Again how does the box behave when pushed, compared to these objects?
Create a shape board by cutting rectangle, circle, square and triangle shaped holes in a cardboard. Trim the edges of the cut-out shapes slightly and colour them. Let the child fit the appropriate shapes in the correct holes.
Year 2
Ask children to draw round the outlines of boxes to produce rectangles and squares. Thick cardboard cut-outs can be used for drawing triangles.
Year 3
Let children count the corners, edges and faces of boxes. This is not as easy as it sounds and some children will need one-to-one assistance. (Teachers themselves should make sure that they can sketch a three dimensional box on the board quickly and recognisably.)
Year 4
Children touch and display the faces of a box, the corners and the edges.
Children make patterns using box shapes or circles or triangles.
Year 5
Ask children to do a full turn; half turn etc after standing up.
Cut rectangles and other shapes out of paper or cardboard. Mark one corner with a dot. Let children guess where the dot will go if the shape is turned through one whole turn, half turn etc.
Then they check the accuracy of their guesses by actually doing the turns.
Year 6
Children are asked to show acute and obtuse angles using sticks. The teacher training institutions have a very important role in ensuring that appropriate activities are within the competence of the trainee teacher. This can only happen if lecturers themselves become adept and innovative in this respect.
They should TALK LESS about activities and DO MORE, by making the teaching aids and demonstrating their use.
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