Grade Level: 5th
Teacher Materials Needed: Bag of wooden polyhedra blocks
Student Materials Needed: Bag of wooden polyhedra blocks, worksheet(speadsheet for type of polyhedra, faces, sides, vertices).
Mathematical Goals for This Lesson:
Students should be able to correctly identify basic polyhedra: cube, rectangular prism, pyramid, cylinder, cone, etc.)
Students should be able to find and explain the components of polyhedra(faces, edge, vertex.)
Students should be able to understand the relationship among vertices, edges, and faces.
Related NC Standard Course of Study Goals/Objectives:
2.03 Use concrete and pictorial representations and appropriate vocabulary to compare and classify polygons and polyhedra; create models of polyhedra (cubes, cylinders, cones, prisms, and pyramids.)
Launch:
First off the teacher will let the students "play" with the blocks and get to know them so they get the need to play out of the way. To keep them on task, I would also give them five minutes of block "play time" at the end that is theirs to lose.
The teacher will go through each block one at a time and hold them up and ask the students to find one at their table. I would get the students to list off characteristics of each polyhedra(cube, cone, etc.) and chart them on the board.
The teacher will give the students the main words such as angle and face when they say things like point and side.
Explore:
The students will partner up with their polyhedra blocks and the worksheet. The worksheet will have four columns: type of polyhedra, faces, sides, vertices. The student will put the number of sides, faces, and vertex/vertices in the appropriate column. The students will work in pairs on this activity so they can help each other and the teacher can see which students are being helped the most.
Summarize:
Have the students turn their attention back to the teacher and go over the answers they got on the worksheets. After making sure everybody had the right answers, provoke them to figuring out a relationship with the faces, sides, vertices. Once they have figured this out, the teacher will give name and explore a little about Euler�s theorem.
Assessment/Evidence of Learning:
As students are working with their partners, make observations about the following:
-Do the students understand the different shape polyhedra?
-Do the students understand the difference between cone and pyramid?
-Do the students know how to count the vertices, faces and sides?
-Do the students know how to classify different polyhedra?
-Do the students understand Euler�s theorem and the relationships?
