Tuesday 26 January 2016

Angles Exist All Around Us

It's important that children make connections between the maths they learn and their own world.

To help us connect with angles and to think critically about what actually constitutes as being an angle, we spent some time at home finding objects that formed angles and drew sketches of them.

Prior to searching, we made predictions of which type of angle we thought we would find the most of (everyone predicted right angles) and the least (some predicted revolutions and others straight).


Upon sharing our findings, some great discussions took place with children challenging and wondering where some objects really were angles or not. These discussions helped some children to understand some misconceptions they have been harbouring about angles such as the need for the lines to be straight.  Some in depth reasoning skill discussions also took place when thinking about what a straight angle really is (two lines intercepting/joining rather than ONE line).









I love some of the creative hunting that took place like the Christmas card for an acute angle:












In our class reflections, we felt this was an enjoyable way to discover how mathematics is really all around us and it provoked some interesting wonderings for us to explore in our unit such as:

° Are there other types of angles other than acute, right, obtuse, straight, reflex and revolution?

° Why do so many objects have right angles?

° Can there be an angle larger than a revolution (360°)?

° Were angles invented or did they always exist?


Some interesting and even philosophical wonderings for us to explore.....








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What do you think? ...........