5 Activities for Teaching Angles

5 Activities for Teaching Angles

I love teaching angles - it's short and sweet, and the students always have a lot of success with it - which makes it all the better.  :)


1.  Interactive Math Journal Entry - this is one of my all-time favorite math journal entries.  I use this as a full-class introduction to angles - not as a station.  That way, I can gauge what knowledge they come to me with, and we can talk about what we will learn while studying angles.  This entry is included in my Interactive Math Journal Resource.  If you download the free preview, you can grab this lesson in its entirety.  You can also read about this activity in a blog post I have HERE.  

2.  Tables, Whiteboards and Washi Tape -

Get the tape out and get ready for some hands-on fun!  (You don't have to use washi tape - masking tape works perfectly fine, too).  To introduce angles at the beginning of our unit, we did a full group lesson on classifying angles.  I taped up a table, armed students with a whiteboard marker, and let them classify (acute, right, obtuse, and straight) as many angles as they could.  They LOVED this activity!  So everyone could fit around the table, I paired up the students so they could take turns marking angles on the table.

Once we were masters at classifying angles, we could move on to measuring angles.  This is such a fun activity - perfect for practice at math centers!  We just used some fun washi tape to "draw" lines on our whiteboards.  We used 5 pieces of tape - and I told them the tape had to be straight and go across the board from one side to the other.  From there, students measured the angles made by the tape.  You could just leave it at this, but I turned this activity into a game by pairing up the students.  Each student had a different color of whiteboard marker.  The first student measured an angle (any angle of their choice) and wrote down the measurement using their color.  Then, the second student checked the answer.  If it was correct, they left it alone.  If it was incorrect, they erased the first answer and wrote the correct answer using their color (the second student).  The second student then got a chance to pick and measure an angle of their choice - recording the answer in their color.  At the end of the activity, the student with the most answers in their color (most correct answers) wins!  

3.  TIME for Angles - This is a quick activity I do at various points throughout the day while we are studying angles.  (I also throw in a few days here and there just to review the concept).  At any given time, I ask the students what time it is on our analog clock (that is good practice just in itself).  I record the time and ask the students what kind of angle it is - acute, right, obtuse, straight.  I  also ask them to estimate the size of the angle.  When doing this, the students realized that each 5 minute interval was 30 degrees - so helpful for estimating.I just keep a running record on the board by the clock and try to get in at least 5 questions throughout the day.

4.  What's in a Name? -  This one is another great station activity - and will also make a great math bulletin board display when students are complete.  I like to use grid (graph) paper for this activity, but it's not necessary.  Have the students write their names in block letters (all straight lines) on the paper.  Then, using a protractor, have the students measure all the angles they can find in their names.  This is also a great way to start to introduce adjacent angles (and complementary and supplementary angles).

5.  Angle Task Cards - This is another great station activity.  These Angle Task Cards contain a Minds-On Task which I like to use to introduce the concept to the whole class, with each student completing the challenge task on a whiteboard or paper.  The twelve task cards can then be completed independently as part of a station, with each student completing the recording sheet to hand in for a formative assessment.  The best part about the recording sheet is that it is perfectly matched up to the answer sheet, so you only need to place the recording sheet over the answer sheet in a light area (like a window) so you can see the answers through the page and easily mark without having to measure each angle.  These task cards also make great exit slips after a lesson.  You can take a peek at them on TpT by clicking HERE.

I also have a more advanced set of task cards for angle relationships - finding the unknown angles with the properties of complementary and supplementary angles, opposite angles, and interior and exterior angles.  You can take a peek at them by clicking on the picture to the right or HERE.

What are some of your best teaching ideas or activities for angles?  I'd love for you to leave a comment below to share with us.

For more 5 Activities to Teach .... posts, click HERE.

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5 Activities for Teaching ...

Welcome to my newest blog series - 5 Activities for Teaching ...

I plan on starting with math concepts.  Every Monday I'll have a new blog post full of 5 ideas / activities / resources you can use for introductions or math stations or centers for a specific math concept.  Even though I plan on starting with math, I'm sure I'll start adding other subjects into the mix.  ;)

It is my hope that by doing this, I'll prepare myself better for math stations this year.  Every year I start with the best of intentions of having student run math stations with lots of engaging concepts for every lesson so I can meet with small groups for some guided math, and every year it falls apart about half way in because I run out of ideas.  I usually end the year with only one day a week in stations, instead of the 3 or 4 I had intended on doing.

So, come along and join my journey.  On this page (which I have linked to my sidebar), I will continue to update as I complete a new blog post - creating what should be an easy to follow and easy to search Table of Contents.

Get ready ... my first post comes tomorrow - 5 Activities for Teaching Angles.

I hope you enjoy!!!  :)

5 Activities for Teaching ... Table of Contents

Math:

• Angles
• Fractions
• Mean, Mode, Median
• Place Value
• Problem Solving

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Theme Day - Paper Airplanes

The end of the school year is FINALLY in sight.  Curriculum is covered, report cards are finished, room is getting cleaned (slowly), the weather is HOT, and we are d.o.n.e.  To add a little more fun to the excitement of the end of the year, and keep the learning and some kind of structure, we're doing 5 fun theme days for the last 5 days of school.

Friday was our first theme day - High Flying Friday - a day dedicated to flying paper airplanes.  :)  I've done a paper airplane day before when I taught Flight in grade 6 science, but I wanted to do a little more for this day.  Now, technically, we only did half a day, because there were some other things we needed to finish off in the morning, but I have lots of ideas to fill a full day if we do this again next year.

Students were given time (about 45 minutes in total) to research different paper airplane designs.  They built and tested many different designs during this time.  I have this super fun Electric Plane Launcher I bought a few years ago, and I let them use it to test the planes in the classroom.

After that, we went outside to fly our planes.  Each student got 3 "flights".  They had to measure the length the plane flew (in metres, so they were working with decimals, too).  We wrote down each measurement on a sticky note.

Once we had our measurements in hand, I drew a quick number line on the board, and students had to place their sticky note measurements on the number line (ordering and comparing numbers).  And then we had to answer our "fraction of the day" question with the data.  (

That was all we had time for, but if I was doing this for the full day, some more ideas are:

• make a line plot graph with the data
• find the mean, mode, median for the distances
• add all the data to find the total distance flown
• have 2 different plane designs - one for distance and one for tricks
• write a descriptive paragraph from the perspective of the plane

I can't wait to share our next 4 theme days with you as our official 5 day count down is ON!  

Some other end of the year activities you may be interested in:

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Graffiti Walls for Review

Using these grafitti walls for review before a test is one of my favorite review activities because it so quick and easy to do ... and my students LOVE it.  It only requires a few pieces of chart paper and markers, and we accomplished everything you see in the picture in less than 10 minutes!!!  Truly.

For this collaborative activity, I started out by writing an open-ended question at the top of each piece of chart paper - related to the main learning goals for the unit.  For the activity above, I kept it as simple as, "What do I know about ... (insert topic here)".  I also turn to my Question Fans (you can see all my Question Fan resources HERE) for more question and reflection ideas.

I then broke the class into groups - this time we had 4 questions, so in my class of 25, there were 6 people per group (and one with 7).  Try to keep the group sizes small so that everyone in the group can write on the chart paper at the same time.  I try not to have more than 6 students per group.  From there, arm everyone with a marker, and tell them they have 2 minutes to write down EVERYTHING they can think of about the question or topic at the top of the paper.  Remind them that this is a graffiti wall, so they can write in any direction, in any color, and to include pictures, numbers and words.  Remind them that they need to be fast, too - they will only have 2 minutes at each chart paper.

Rotate groups every 2 minutes - only giving seconds in between each rotation.  With 4 rotations, we completed this activity in 8 minutes.  Just look at all that information in only 8 minutes.

This makes a fabulous review activity because you can cover every main concept before a summative task or test.  You can see where your students need a little extra help, and where they are mastering the information.  One teacher told me when she tried this, she gave each group the same color marker, so she could see from their answers on the papers, which group needed a little extra reinforcement before the summative.  I love that idea!

If you complete this activity a few days before a summative, you can take the next day to do a second rotation (which is SO worth the time).  Give each student a different marker, and have them assemble in the same groups, and go through the same rotations, but this time, have the FIX any misconceptions they see.  I've also done this with sticky notes - give each student a few sticky notes to place over the misconceptions they see, and then together, as a whole group, we go through the sticky notes and discuss whether or not there are errors in the information, and how to fix them if there are.

Although this activity is a perfect summative review for students, it also makes a great diagnostic to see what knowledge students are bringing to a new concept or unit.  I also really like it for reading comprehension activities - asking different questions following a read aloud or shared reading activity.  For reading activities, it is especially important to have deep thinking, open response questions so each response is truly unique.

I have a clothesline hung in my classroom, and I hang these papers from the clothesline after they are completed.  It is such a wonderful display of student learning - and the students are always amazed at all the information they were able to recall.


Question Fan Resources:

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