Journal Article Geometry

Lauren Hutton Journal Article Citation: Mack, N.K. (2007). Gaining Insights into Children’s Geometric Knowledge. Teaching Children Mathematics. 238-245. Retrieved from http://www.nctm.org Grade Level: 3-5 Brief Summary: The article shows the importance of understanding children’s geometric knowledge from the viewpoint of the author, Nancy Mack. From the article, we can see that the NCTM standards require that the children should learn “geometry from a variety of perspectives, including analyzing characteristics and properties of twodimensional shapes.” The author does activities with the children to find out what their current knowledge of geometry is. She reads the book The Greedy Triangle to help interest the students and also to find out how they view different shapes. She found that the students relied on their visual interpretation of the shapes to recognize what they were, and not necessarily any other mathematical components. After continuing with the lessons, she found that the students started to use other concepts like how many sides and angles the different shapes had in order to classify them in a certain category. We learned from the article that examining how children understand shapes, teachers can learn to prepare geometry lessons that are meaningful to the students. Classroom Application: I enjoyed reading this article because I felt that it helped me understand that sometimes you must get an understanding of where the children are currently at in a certain subject before jumping into a lesson. The author first did activities with shapes to see how the children classified them. I felt that this gave her the ability to then plan her geometry lesson to add on to what they already know. I hope to use this strategy when I am a teacher in my own classroom. I also liked that she related the lesson to the book The Greedy Triangle. This seemed like a fun way to help the students learn and I would like to find a copy of this book and use it in my class when I am teaching a geometry lesson. I will also use some of the activities she used. For example, having different shapes for the students to compare and decide if they think they are a shape or not. Overall, I felt that this article helped me learn a lot about geometry instruction and what I need to do in order to prepare my lessons in the future.