Lesson 1

What Attributes Do You See?

Lesson Purpose

The purpose of this lesson is for students to sort shapes into categories based on their attributes.

Lesson Narrative

In previous grades, students sorted shapes into categories based on the attributes of the shape. In this lesson, students revisit this work and learn the terms angle in a shape and right angle in a shape to describe the corners of shapes. This will be helpful in later lessons as students further sort triangles and rectangles by additional attributes. Throughout the lesson, if students have trouble determining if sides have the same length, offer rulers to measure the side lengths.

  • Representation
  • MLR2

Learning Goals

Teacher Facing

  • Describe attributes of shapes.
  • Sort shapes based on attributes in a way that makes sense to them.

Student Facing

  • Let’s sort shapes into groups.

Required Materials

Materials to Copy

  • Shape Cards Grade 3

Required Preparation

Activity 1:

  • Create a set of cards from the blackline master for each group of 2. 

CCSS Standards

Building Towards

Lesson Timeline

Warm-up 10 min
Activity 1 35 min
Lesson Synthesis 10 min
Cool-down 5 min

Teacher Reflection Questions

What part of the lesson went really well today in terms of students’ learning? What did you do that made that part go well?

Suggested Centers

  • Can You Draw It? (1–5), Stage 2: Grade 2 Shapes (Supporting)
  • How Are They the Same? (1–5), Stage 2: Grade 2 Shapes (Supporting)
  • Which One? (K–5), Stage 3: Grade 2 Shapes (Supporting)

Print Formatted Materials

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Additional Resources

Google Slides

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PowerPoint Slides

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