options: Operations & Algebra: students learn to solve problems using algebraic thinking and operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. They may learn to identify and explain arithmetic patterns, evaluate or manipulate numerical expressions, and reason with equations and inequalities.

Statistics & Probability: students learn to analyze and produce data distributions, and build understanding of univariate and bivariate data. They learn to interpret data, make statistical inferences, justify conclusions, understand rules of probability, and use probability to make decisions.

Ratios & Proportional Relationships: students learn to recognize, describe, represent, and reason with ratios, rates, proportional relationships, and percent.

Functions: students learn to define, use, and evaluate functions to model relationships between quantities.

Number & Operations in Base Ten: students learn to work with the base-ten system and build place value understanding.

Number & Operations - Fractions: students learn to understand fractions as numbers and may work with them using addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

Modeling: students learn to choose and use appropriate mathematics and statistics to analyze real-world empirical situations, improve decisions, and report on their conclusions and the reasoning behind them.

Measurement & Data: students learn to work with data and measure attributes such as time, money, length, area, and volume. They may learn to compare measurements to operations and convert between different units of measure.

Geometry: students learn to classify geometric figures by their properties, and understand and compare the relationships between them. Students develop and use formulas to compute lengths, areas, and volumes, and they use transformations to generate new shapes and compare existing ones. Geometry can be studied with and without coordinates.

Number Systems and Quantity: students learn to understand the complex number system and reason quantitatively.

Counting & Cardinality: students learn to know number names and the count sequence, count to tell the number of objects, and compare numbers.
problem_activity: Narrative
The purpose of this activity is for students to build and compare flat and solid shapes. Students are not expected to build precise shapes. Using clay to build the shapes helps students feel the difference between flat and solid shapes. The terms “flat” and “solid” are introduced in the activity synthesis. Students may benefit from getting to hold and see the solid shapes up close as they build them.
Required Materials
Materials to Gather
Clay
Required Preparation
Each student needs a piece of clay.
Gather a cone and cylinder to display.
Launch
Groups of 2
Give each student a piece of clay.
“Use your clay to make a shape that you know.”
1 minute: independent work time
“Share your shape with your partner. How are they the same? How are they different?” (The shapes are different. I made a circle and my partner made a triangle.)
30 seconds: quiet think time
1 minute: partner discussion
Share responses.
Activity
Display a cylinder.
“Make this shape with your clay.”
2 minutes: independent work time
Display a cone.
“Make this shape with your clay.”
2 minutes: independent work time
“Describe the shape that you made to your partner. What does it look like?” (It looks like an ice cream cone. It’s tall. It has a point on the bottom.)
30 seconds: quiet think time
2 minutes: partner discussion
Share responses.
Student Response
Teachers with a valid work email address can
click here to register or sign in
for free access to Student Response.
Activity Synthesis
Display a group of flat shapes and a group of solid shapes that students created.
“What is different about the shapes that we made first and the rest of the shapes that we made?” (The shapes that we made first are all flat. The other shapes stick up.)
“The first shapes that we made were flat shapes, like circles and rectangles. Then we built some other shapes. What can we call these shapes?” (solid shapes, big shapes)
“These shapes are solid shapes.”
“Use your clay to make a flat shape.”
“Use your clay to make a solid shape.”


correct_option_index: 8