Grandfather Tang’s Story by Ann Tompert – Read-aloud Math Story

Lesson Plan Overview

• Students can identify shapes and can use smaller shapes to form larger, composite shapes.
• Students can explain various places they see shapes.

Related Mathematics Common Core State Standard(s)

• CCSS.MATH.Content.K.G.B.6 Compose simple shapes to form larger shapes. For example, “Can you join these two triangles with full sides touching to make a rectangle?”
• CCSS.MATH.Content.1.G.A.2 Compose two-dimensional shapes (rectangles, squares, trapezoids, triangles, half-circles, and quarter-circles) or three-dimensional shapes (cubes, right rectangular prisms, right circular cones, and right circular cylinders) to create a composite shape, and compose new shapes from the composite shape.

Related AASL 21st Century Learner Standards

• AASL 2.1.3 Use strategies to draw conclusions from information and apply knowledge to curricular areas, real world situations, and further investigations.

Lesson Plan Resources (Instructions, Worksheets, Slides)

• Lesson Plan Instructions: Grandfather’s Tang Story (PDF)
• Shapes Powerpoint for Grandfather Tang’s Story lesson (PPT)
• Also need plastic tangram pieces or enough copies of a traced tangram sheet for students to cut out
• Also need copies of animal shapes that fit the tangrams

My Plans to Use this Lesson:

I watched my supervising librarian teach this lesson about a year ago. I wasn’t an intern at that time, but I remember how much the students enjoyed playing with tangrams during recess. I noticed my supervising librarian chose different standards for this powerpoint lesson. However, after I revisited the lesson, I decided the main purpose of the lesson is to take knowledge from a story and try it hands on, see what shapes fit against each other and form new shapes. So I chose different CCSS and AASL standards.

Overall, the lesson plan is to show the students the powerpoint and emphasize what are shapes? and why do we use shapes? Then you read Grandfather Tang’s Story and point out how shapes can be used to tell a story. Then you let students use tangrams to fill in animal shapes and chat with them about how the pieces line up and form bigger shapes. With older students, you could make several sheets of tangram sheets into a story.

Estimated time: 45 minutes

Lesson Plan Credits: I got all of the lesson plan instructions and ideas from my supervising librarian.