ELED 5301-090

Task 1:
Read Dr. Margie Mason's description of the van Hiele levels.

What stage do you think you are in? What about most students in 1st grade? 3rd grade? 5th grade? High school students?

In a randomized study of over 7,000 high school students entering geometry, Usiskin(1982) found this distribution.

Level	% of students
0	28%
1	44%
2	14%
3	5%
4	less than 1%

If this is typical of high school students, at what van Hiele level do most K-5 students fit?

Posterous: How did you feel during high school geometry? How do you feel about teaching geometry?

Task 2:
As you read in the article students are classified by van Hiele level based on what they are able to do on given tasks. Here are some videos recorded by Mason of students performing various tasks.
As you watch consider:
1) What types of questions is Dr. Mason posing to the students?
2) What van Hiele level do you think student is functioning on?
3) What evidence in the video suggests that level?

You may need to watch each video a few times.

Video 1	Before the video the student sorted triangles and squares from a pile of two-dimensional shapes. The student is asked to describe what a triangle and a square looks like.
Video 2	A student is asked if a triangle is still a triangle when it is rotated.
Video 3	The same student from Video 2 is given an obtuse triangle and is asked to identify it.
Video 4	A student is asked to distinguish between congruent and similar shapes.
Video 5	A student is asked whether two angles are congruent.
Video 6	A student is asked to identify and sort 3-d shapes.
Video 7	A student is asked to sort triangles.

Task 3:
Read van de Walle's Chapter on Geometric Thinking.

Based on van de Walle's chapter and the new Common Core State Standards in Geometry you will find a geometry task (from van de Walle's chapter, online or a textbook), and complete the following template. Submit it via Moodle.