Monday, February 23, 2009

Searching for Shapes

Last week we started studying geometry. We looked at a couple of books with great pictures and found shapes in them. I asked my students if they could find those shapes (circle, rectangle, square, and triangle) in our classroom. I was so impressed with what they found that I wanted to allow them to capture it in some way.

To start we looked at some pictures I had taken on a couple of recent trips. I wasn't looking for shapes when I took the pictures, but the students found a lot. I put them up on the smartboard and the kids outlined a few of the shapes they found. Here are the Brooklyn Bridge and Union Station.


After looking at seven of my pictures and finding shapes in them, I gave the kids digital cameras to go and take pictures themselves. (One of our fabulous art teachers wrote a grant a few years ago and got eight digital cameras.) They worked in groups of two or three sharing the camera and we walked all around the school. They took pictures in the cafeteria, front office, gym, library, and hallways. I've only glanced at their pictures but I'm really impressed. Later this week I'll put their pictures up on the smartboard for them to identify shapes. I'll share some of their pictures in a future post (when I've had a chance to download them). We had such a great time doing this!

3 comments:

kirsten said...

I love this idea of looking within Photographs (and on the Smartboard) and then giving the cameras to the kids to take pictures. I've always let children go out to look for shapes in the world, but hadn't thought about including the camera as a recording tool (which, now that I think of it, is such a natural extension of it). :)

Unlimited said...

I'm doing this with fourth grade in a few weeks -and can't wait!

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on your ASCD article. I found out about it on Twitter (mcleod). I plan to share this with my staff and encourage them to check out your blog as well. Thank you for all you are doing to help us reach learners!