Angles and Pattern Blocks

Whew!  Am I glad end-of-year testing is over!  Can I get an Amen?  It just gets worse every year!  I feel so sorry for my kids...and their teacher.  My nerves are frazzled.  We received sympathy treats and notes from other teachers not having their name attached to any test during the week that did make me feel a bit better, but not much. :/

(Sympathy Treat/Notes) 

Then the morning of the math end-of-year Georgia Milestone Test, I walked in stressed to see this screensaver on my old desktop computer.  I almost cried.  I wanted to be there...where the test didn't matter.  

Enough of my whining about the test.  I want to share an angle activity I did before testing began.  Not that I had much time to spend on angles since Geometry is the last 4th grade math standard and there are way too many standards to teach, yet alone master.  (Oops!  Whining again!)  We did spend some time anyway on practicing angles using pattern blocks.  First, we learned the 4 types of angles...acute, right, obtuse, and straight.  It was more of a review since angles are also a 3rd grade standard.  
We reviewed our artifacts chart and our hand movements.  (We make all the angles with our hands, beginning with the benchmark, 90 degrees/right angle.)

One thing I made sure students remembered was that the length of the lines does not matter.  (We had already had a lesson where we broke toothpicks to various sizes and created angles.)  

I began the lesson by using a chart to show

 what a large angle made of two pattern 

blocks might look like.

Next, I modeled pattern blocks on the white board with jumbo pattern block magnets.  Students were allowed to find and point out the large angles made where the 2 pattern blocks joined.

Finally, the students received their own packet of pattern blocks and created their own large angles.  They only had to find one angle.  

My students seemed to enjoy the activity.  The only problem we had was at the beginning of the project.  Some students were not making angles where the 2 pattern blocks joined.  They were simply looking at any angle on one pattern block.  We got it taken care of though. :)

I hope everyone has a good week.  It won't be long now.  My county has 15 school days left! :)