Who am I? (With shapes)

Teaching focus:

I love a good game of who am I. There are so many variations one can have. Here's one with shapes. The teaching focus is for students to focus on identifying and recognising attributes of shapes.

From our workshop discussions in week 8 and 9, we discussed how the more helpful learning sequence for shapes is to introduce 3D shapes before 2D shapes as 2D shapes are less tangible than 3D shapes. By learning about 3D shapes first, introducing 2D shapes becomes easier because you can explain how 2D shapes are used to dsecribe the faces of 3D shapes, thereby helping them to see the connection between the two seemingly different concepts.

How to play:

(Basic level)

• Display the 3D shapes on the floor in front of a small group of children
• Describe some attributes of a particular shape (e.g. This shape can slide but it cannot roll. It has six faces. None of them are curved. All the faces look exactly the same. It has 12 sides, all of which are the same length.)
• Have a child volunteer pick out the shape he or she thinks you are describing
• Ask the child to pick a shape. This can be from another set of shapes inside a box or opaque bag so that the child can have a look at the shape in order to describe it properly without anyone else noticing which shape it is.

(Medium level)

• Play the same game as before but have the child describe the shape by visualising it in his/her mind
• Alternatively, play a similar game with just two players
• Provide each player with one set of 3D shapes and a photograph of one of those shapes
• Have the students try to guess the shape on the other person's photograph by asking yes/no questions, E.g. Does your shape have six faces?

(Medium level)

• Play celebrity heads with shapes
• Stick a picture of a shape on the child volunteer's forehead (or a headband displaying the picture)
• Have the volunteer ask yes/no questions about their shape while the rest of the class answers them
• The aim of the game is for the volunteer to guess the shape by identifying it from a pile or saying the name of the shape (keep in mind naming the shape may take the focus away from describing attributes)