The purpose of this activity is to engage students in sorting shapes by a common feature.
This activity assumes the students have experience in the following areas:
The problem is sufficiently open ended to allow the students freedom of choice in their approach. It may be scaffolded with guidance that leads to a solution, and/or the students might be given the opportunity to solve the problem independently.
The example responses at the end of the resource give an indication of the kind of response to expect from students who approach the problem in particular ways.
Here are some different forms of transport.
Show how they could be sorted into groups that share common features.
Explain what the members of each group have in common.
Note to teacher: This activity may be carried out with material objects to sort, or images on cards. A printable page of transport images for this use is provided in the copymaster, we recommend using a random selection of about half of the images.
The following prompts illustrate how this activity can be structured around the phases of the Mathematics Investigation Cycle.
Introduce the problem. Allow ākonga time to read it and discuss in pairs or small groups.
Discuss ideas about how to solve the problem. Emphasise that for now you want ākonga to say how they would solve the problem, not to actually solve it.
Allow ākonga time to work through their strategy, and find a solution to the problem.
Allow ākonga time to check their answers and then either have them pair share with other groups or ask for volunteers to share their solution with the class.
The student sorts a collection of cards into groups by colour and resorts the cards by a different feature, mode of transport.
Click on the image to enlarge it. Click again to close.
The student sorts the cards using a criterion that they create, the environment of travel (air, water, land).
Printed from https://meaningfulmaths.nt.edu.au/mmws/nz/resource/sorting-out-travel at 8:49pm on the 26th February 2024