Just Plane Hard

There are some things that you learn to just dread as a third grade teacher. Introducing children to plane geometry is one of them.

Students get the idea of the three dimensional shapes even when they have weird names like “rectangular prism.” But the two-dimensional world is different.  All of a sudden we’re telling them that them that the thing they always called a line isn’t a line but a “segment” and that there are they need to be able to distinguish between angles that are bigger or smaller than right angles – it tends to alternatively bore and befog the eight year old mind.

So homework may be hard tonight. We tried our best to talk about it today, but it was hard for them to wrap their minds around it.

Homework:  (1) Continue to study spelling. (2) Science book, page A75, questions 24-27. (3) Lines and Angles, Math, pages 369-371, numbers 1-25. (4) Review/Test, Math, pages 144 and Cumulative Review, Math page 145.