2nd Grade: Spectacular Squares

This week we spent time really investigating the square.  We went beyond the typical understanding that it has 4 equal sides.  

The kids started by sharing what they already know about squares and we listed their ideas on the board.  The understanding was fairly basic, it is a shape with 4 sides and those sides are equal.

I then gave each student a square piece of paper and we looked at how we could split our square into 7 additional shapes, building our own set of Tangrams.  The students had to watch and listen carefully as we folded our paper to create a square, 2 large right triangles, 1 medium right triangle, 2 small right triangle, a smaller square, and a parallelogram. 

NEW VOCABULARY INTRODUCED:

right triangles, congruent, perpendicular, quadrilateral, parallelogram, trapezoid, rhombus, right angles, 90 degrees, and diagonal

Photo Sep 29, 2 34 20 PMAfter folding and labeling our square with our new vocabulary words, we did it one more time, but this time we actually cut the pieces apart.  The kids loved to see how a square could be transformed.  They had fun putting their pieced together to rebuild the square and then to deconstruct the square.  Next week we will play with their new Tangram pieces.

Next the kids were given a logic puzzle: How Many Squares Do You See?  This was actually the second time they had seen the puzzle.  We put on our BLUE THINKING HATS so that we could think about our thinking, make a plan.  The kids then counted the squares and shared how many they found.  We had anything from 16 to 32 squares found.  We discussed whether we should have different answers.  Most of the kids agreed that we shouldn’t since we all had the same paper. 🙂 This week we looked at them again.  I told the kids that there were more than 32 squares and challenged them to find more than they found last week.  Everyone found more then their first time, and some even found the full 40 squares.

Photo Oct 03, 10 50 31 AMAt the end of the day the 2nd graders shared some rules to being square and a new word that they learned.

Photo Oct 03, 10 52 59 AMBe on the look out for more fun with squares next week.

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