What Is an Angle?
5 min
Narrative
The purpose of this Warm-up is to draw students’ attention to the figures formed by pairs of segments that are joined at a point, in preparation for an exploration of angles. Students may notice and wonder many things about the clocks, but describing how the figures are formed by the hands, how they are the same, and how they are different are the important discussion points.
Launch
- Groups of 2
- Display the image.
- “What do you notice? What do you wonder?”
- 1 minute: quiet think time
Teacher Instructions
- “Discuss your thinking with your partner.”
- 1 minute: partner discussion
- Share and record responses.
Student Task
What do you notice? What do you wonder?
Sample Response
Students may notice:
- The clocks show many different times.
- There are 3 hands that intersect on each clock.
- The hands look like line segments.
- The clocks have no numbers.
- On two of the clocks, the hour hand and the minute hand overlap and make a straight segment.
Students may wonder:
- Why does each clock have a different time?
- Are these clocks from different places?
- Are we going to learn more about time?
Activity Synthesis (Teacher Notes)
- “Besides the time, what else changes when the long and short hands of the clocks turn?” (The directions of the hands, the figures created by the two hands, the appearance of the clock.)
- “Some of you may wonder what time and clocks have to do with lines, points, rays, and segments. Let’s keep thinking about this as we work on our first activity.”
Standards
Building Toward
- 4.MD.5·Recognize angles as geometric shapes that are formed wherever two rays share a common endpoint, and understand concepts of angle measurement:
- 4.MD.C.5·Recognize angles as geometric shapes that are formed wherever two rays share a common endpoint, and understand concepts of angle measurement:
15 min
15 min
10 min
Knowledge Components
All skills for this lesson
No KCs tagged for this lesson
What Is an Angle?
5 min
Narrative
The purpose of this Warm-up is to draw students’ attention to the figures formed by pairs of segments that are joined at a point, in preparation for an exploration of angles. Students may notice and wonder many things about the clocks, but describing how the figures are formed by the hands, how they are the same, and how they are different are the important discussion points.
Launch
- Groups of 2
- Display the image.
- “What do you notice? What do you wonder?”
- 1 minute: quiet think time
Teacher Instructions
- “Discuss your thinking with your partner.”
- 1 minute: partner discussion
- Share and record responses.
Student Task
What do you notice? What do you wonder?
Sample Response
Students may notice:
- The clocks show many different times.
- There are 3 hands that intersect on each clock.
- The hands look like line segments.
- The clocks have no numbers.
- On two of the clocks, the hour hand and the minute hand overlap and make a straight segment.
Students may wonder:
- Why does each clock have a different time?
- Are these clocks from different places?
- Are we going to learn more about time?
Activity Synthesis (Teacher Notes)
- “Besides the time, what else changes when the long and short hands of the clocks turn?” (The directions of the hands, the figures created by the two hands, the appearance of the clock.)
- “Some of you may wonder what time and clocks have to do with lines, points, rays, and segments. Let’s keep thinking about this as we work on our first activity.”
Standards
Building Toward
- 4.MD.5·Recognize angles as geometric shapes that are formed wherever two rays share a common endpoint, and understand concepts of angle measurement:
- 4.MD.C.5·Recognize angles as geometric shapes that are formed wherever two rays share a common endpoint, and understand concepts of angle measurement: