Geometry for GIANTS

Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month

This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.

Little people sometimes need GIANT experiences. Won't you help us out? I am a first grade teacher at a semi-urban, 600 student school in San Lorenzo Unified School District. We are a Title 1 school with a fifty percent English Language Learner population. We are physically located in Hayward, California. We were labeled an IIUSP (Immediate Intervention Under performing) school. This caused us to spend many staff development days looking at the results data from our state testing and determined that we needed to focus our efforts in Mathematics in Number Sense, Measurement/Geometry and Reasoning. We contracted Bay Area Math Project from Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley. They proposed many lessons and strategies to use with our students. This is one of our favorites! If you have ever been in a first grade classroom, you will know that many manipulatives are available to sort, count and build number sense. These manipulatives are generally for tabletop use and range in size from "tiny to small". GIANT Geometry involves students revisiting geometric shapes but with a GIGANTIC new twist. Huge three-foot dowels become the choice manipulative as students build common shapes such as squares and triangles. Students examine the construction strength of these shapes on a 2-D basis. They are then are told to build the shape on a 3-D scale. The students delight in managing the wieldy dowels and hose connectors. Shapes are chest high to some of the children ergo the title "Geometry for Giants". The activity allows students to explore shapes from a new perspective of size and dimension. This gives new meaning to "constructing meaning in learning". Imagine the children's surprise in discovering that three sided figures are actually stronger than four. This added the lesson that "more", if not used well, is not always better than "less". This lesson engages all learners: high, low, limited language, and all genders. It is kinesthetic, visual, hands-on and most of all fun. There are 6 teachers at our first grade level. We all cooperate and teach the same units. This unit will reach 120 students and will engage every one of them in a fun, hands-on way. It builds language, cooperation, math reasoning and introduces a bit of Engineering. Activities such as this BAMP lesson are a perfect intervention for our student population. Won't you be a GIANT in our hearts and help us fund it?