Last week I introduced one second grade class to Christopher’s Which Shape Doesn’t Belong book. After hearing about its success on Twitter I decided to use it with one of my classrooms. After downloading the pdf I displayed the images in front of the class and asked the students to think of which shape didn’t belong. Just about everyone in the class raised their hands. Students overwhelmingly decided that the unfilled shape didn’t belong. Students were ready for the next page of shapes when I saw a hand raise from the back of the classroom. That particular student said that wasn’t the only answer. Quite a bit of the class raised their eyebrows and their voices in saying that the unfilled shape was the answer. The student raising his hand said that the triangle doesn’t belong because it only has three vertices. Other students started to raise their hands with additional solutions. Through this process students started to find more solutions. The student input became contagious. I would sum up what happened during the next 10 minutes here. Words like vertex, diagonal, side, symmetry, and angles were starting to be part of our class conversation. I also was able to identify misconceptions and ask questions to think about their responses. This led to more student responses and questions. This conversation wasn’t planned but I felt like it was worth the time and fit in perfectly with my geometry unit. I was going to move to the second page of the book when our class ran out of time.
So the next day the class started the day off with page two of the book. Again, students found different solutions and the class continued the conversation. After a brief amount of time I introduced a shape book activity.
For this activity students were asked to create a personal shape book similar to Christopher’s book. In addition to creating a which shape book, students were asked to include particular shapes in their book.
Students were given guidance on the first page. I explained the directions, what was expected for the assignment and answered a few questions. I included a formative assessment on the last page of the booklet. Students worked diligently in creating the initial parts of their books for the rest of the class. Most of the time was spent on the reasoning pages. The gallery below will show some of our progress from last week.
I’m planning on having students share their books with the class next week.
Educational Aspirations 
Yes – I like the idea of making the students into producers. Already there was a lot of thinking going on with Christopher’s book. In actually making books there are different kinds of thinking that go on as well. It’s something I’d like to try with my Year 4s.
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