Lesson 4 - A Learning Point

I consider myself someone who knows my shapes pretty well. All my life I grew up with the simple notion that a square is just a shape with four equal sides and four right angles. A rectangle on the other hand, only has two equal sides and four right angles. After yesterday, I felt like a child with level zero visualisation. I only based my knowledge on the appearance of the shape – “it looks like a square” (p. 403) so it must be a square. However, Thursday’s lesson puzzled me yet again. Since when is a square a rectangle? I guess a square, like a rectangle is a quadrilateral with four right angles. Yet a rectangle can never be a square because it does not have four equal sides. Why didn’t my teacher tell me all this? Perhaps she may not have known it herself. Alright, so it is not too late to find out these things. After all, I am in this course to learn new things.

One thing I must take note of is to never put the two shapes together and ask children to circle or colour all the rectangles on paper. If a child picks out a square when I ask for rectangles, it is best to check with the child why he did that. Could it be that he picked up the square by accident because he was not sure of the shape or perhaps he really does have some prior knowledge about this shape from his parents or some other source.

As teachers, we must prepare children to learn skills such as patterning, visualisation and number sense. We must walk that journey with them to the end point. It is alright for children to get lost. It is alright for them to back track a little as long as we are with them providing that continuous support.