Polygon Class Learning Opportunities: Interplay Between Teacher’s Moves, Children’s Geometrical Thinking, and Geometrical Task

Abstract

This study identifies characteristics of polygon class learning opportunities for 8–9-year-old children during the whole-class instruction. We consider the interplay between the geometrical tasks demanding different ways of reasoning, features of children’s geometrical thinking, and the teacher’s moves to identify characteristics of learning opportunities. We identified 3 types of learning opportunities during whole-class instruction: (a) recognizing (initiating the deconstruction dimensional), (b) supporting children’s analytical reasoning, and (c) encouraging children to establish relations between attributes of the figures. Our findings highlight the holistic facet of the learning opportunities of geometry in primary education that connect the students’ geometrical arguments generated by solving enriching geometrical tasks and the teacher’s moves drawing on children’s geometrical thinking during the whole-class instruction. We conjectured that weaving these 3 aspects together supported the emergence of relevant geometric learning opportunities for children.