If you look at the new math curriculum - you may think geometry and measurement are missing, but they are actually now grouped together in Spatial Sense. These areas are combined to emphasize the relationship between geometry and measurement and to highlight the role of spatial reasoning in the development of both.
In this strand, students analyze the properties of shapes and use these properties to define, compare and construct shapes and objects. They begin with their surroundings and the objects in them, and work on visualizing objects from different perspectives. As children move through the grades, they develop a more sophisticated understanding of size, shape, location, and movement. They develop an understanding of units of measure and choose what unit to use when estimating and measuring. They apply their understanding of the relationship between shapes and measurement to develop formulas to calculate length, area, volume and more.
This strand helps children develop the language and tools to compare, describe and navigate the world around them. It is a gateway to professions in other STEM disciplines and builds the foundational skills needed for architecture, construction, design, engineering, and research.
To help support spatial skills, here are some skills you can work on:
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Visualizing
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Moving ones body in space
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Scaling up or down (imagining objects or amounts as proportionally larger or smaller)
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Composing and decomposing (physically or mentally combining or taking apart shapes to make different shapes)
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Navigating and wayfinding
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Orienting
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Creating and reading maps, graphs and other visual forms of data
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Locating objects and remembering location of objects
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Imagining objects moving in space
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Creating or designing objects
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Looking at things from different perspectives
Celebrating the Many Global Contributions to Mathematics
Throughout human history, people from many cultures and societies have contributed to the continuously developing understanding of math. As a part of each monthly newsletter, one of these many significant contributions will be shared in celebration of how diverse ways of knowing have shaped our mathematics today.
Did you know that Euclid’s The Elements is considered by many to be the most influential textbook of all time? The book, written 2300 years ago, revolutionised Geometry by introducing axioms and mathematical rigour.
Euclidean Geometry is based on five intuitive principles or axioms. From these axioms, other theorems are proved. The five postulates are:
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Given any two points, there is a straight line that joins them.
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A straight line segment can be prolonged indefinitely.
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A circle can be constructed when a point for its centre and a distance for its radius are given.
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All right angles are equal.
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If a straight line falling on two straight lines makes the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the two straight lines, if produced indefinitely, will meet on that side on which the angles are less than the two right angles