Instructional Activities and Lesson Plans
Learning with understanding is essential to enable students to solve the new kinds of problems they will inevitably face in the future.
-NCTM Principles and Standards for School Mathematics1
"Teaching mathematics is a complex endeavor, and there are no easy recipes."2 In designing activities and lesson plans, teachers must work carefully to develop students' understanding of mathematics concepts. Teachers should also strive to represent those concepts in real-life problem-solving situations and authentic settings to which children can relate.
In this section is a complete alphabetical listing of the instructional activities and lesson plans referred to in the Content Strands sections of IMAGES. Teachers should always remember to reinforce the connection between the activity or lesson plan and the concept of geometry and measurement it models.
The use of these activities and lessons requires flexibility; the appropriate grade level of each is ultimately the teacher's decision, as in some instances older students would benefit from activities suggested for a younger level, and vice versa. Frequently, activities and lessons will overlap two or more content strands.
Lessons within this document address the five process standards presented in the NCTM Principles and Standards for School Mathematics: problem solving, reasoning, representation, connections, and communication.3 The activities included also exemplify assessment strategies and best practices for teaching, which are both outlined in greater detail in other chapters.