Skip to main content
Printable page generated Friday, 29 March 2024, 6:30 AM
Use 'Print preview' to check the number of pages and printer settings.
Print functionality varies between browsers.
Unless otherwise stated, copyright © 2024 The Open University, all rights reserved.
Printable page generated Friday, 29 March 2024, 6:30 AM

TDU 10: Combination shapes and solids: developing the students’ belief

Introduction

Described image

Feeling comfortable with working on combination shapes and solids is important in school mathematics and in real life. Buildings, chairs, cutlery, rangoli patterns, mosques and temples all consist of not one shape or solid but of several put together. Calculating volume and area is something that is done all the time intuitively in real life. For example, a parent will give a child a small glass and not a pint-size glass because the child’s small hands cannot handle of the size of a pint glass easily; also, the child has a smaller stomach so will probably not drink a pint of water in one go. Hence people are familiar with combinations of shapes, solids and volumes, but students often find it a difficult topic to deal with in school mathematics.

One of the reasons for this might be that the chapters on volume and surface area are perceived by the students to be about a series of procedures to be followed and complicated formulae to be memorised. This encourages them to become passive learners and they might experience mathematics as something that is ‘done to them’, without any possibility for developing their own thinking and being creative. This can result in students feeling powerless, disengaged and despondent about learning mathematics.

In this unit you will focus on how to teach composing and decomposing combination solids and shapes, and the mathematical thinking involved in this process. Through activities you will also think about how to develop students’ capacity to make choices and play a more active role in their own learning.

In this unit, you are invited to first undertake the activities for yourself and reflect on the experience as a learner; then try them out in your classroom and reflect on that experience as a teacher. Trying for yourself will mean you get insights into a learner’s experiences, which can influence your teaching and your experiences as a teacher. This will help you to develop a more learner-focused teaching environment.

The activities in this unit require you to work on mathematical problems either alone or with your class. First you will read about a mathematical approach or method; then you will apply it in the activity to solve a given problem. Afterwards you will be able to read a commentary by another teacher who did the same activity with a group of students so you can evaluate its effectiveness and compare with your own experience.

Pause for thought

Combined shapes and solids can be found everywhere in daily life in buildings, objects and structures. On your way from home to work, look around you and identify objects that are made of a combination of shapes and solids.

  • Why are the shapes and solids combined?
  • Could any of these objects have been made out of one shape or solid without losing their purpose?
  • To what extent is the area, surface area or volume of importance in any of these objects?

Learning outcomes

After studying this unit, you should be able to:

  • engage students in thinking about composing and decomposing complex solids into simple solids

  • promote the use of mathematical operations of adding and subtracting to work out volume and surface area of complex solids

  • support students in developing and valuing their own thinking and learning in mathematics

  • facilitate students’ reflection on their learning.

1 Issues with learning mathematics

‘Mathematical trauma’ sounds rather dramatic. However, more and more research points to students experiencing real, distressing trauma while studying mathematics. It may seem easy to dismiss or ignore this and say, ‘Well, they just do not get it’, or ‘They should study harder and practise more’ – but there are real reasons to believe that this is what is stopping people using mathematics in their everyday lives, with many negative consequences to them and society as a whole.

Mathematical trauma comes from students feeling and believing that they are unable to act or think for themselves when learning mathematics. Lange and Meaney (2011) describe mathematical trauma as ‘being deprived of opportunities for expression, interpretation and agency in relation to mathematics, and hence positioned as passive receivers of superficial mathematical knowledge amounts’. It can have serious consequences for those students who are affected: they may reject mathematics as something they are not able to do, or get into a spiral of self-fulfilling prophecies because the moment they cannot make sense of some area in mathematics, they believe it is because they simply do not ‘get it’ and they never will be capable of doing so. This can also affect their belief in themselves as being able to do other areas of mathematics as well. They begin to feel they have no choice or control. This is also called having ‘no agency’.

One of the triggers for mathematical trauma is the language of mathematics itself – both the symbolic representation and mathematical vocabulary, which can feel very alien and hard to connect to existing language knowledge and structures.

Activity 1 aims to address the issues of how to deal with mathematical vocabulary. It requires the students to devise their own mathematical dictionary with the word, the official explanation, their own explanation and an illustration of what the word means. Although in this case it is related to the vocabulary encountered in the chapter on surface area and volume, the approach can be taken for all topics students study. In Part 2 of this activity, students are also asked to reflect on their learning in Part 1. This is repeated in most of the activities in this unit. The purpose of this is for students to become more aware of what makes them learn and to become more active in their learning. This will give them a sense of choice and control over their learning.

Activity 1: Making your own mathematical dictionary

Students may do this activity individually or in pairs. It may well be an activity that is repeated with new subjects, building over time, or it may be used as a revision activity. Students may even develop their own dictionaries in a separate notebook or you may develop a class dictionary with students tasked to write entries that are then put on display and maybe reworked over time.

Part 1: Making the dictionary

Look at the chapter in your textbook about area, volume or surface area.

  • a.Make a table with at least four columns. (Read through this activity before you decide on the layout of that table.)
  • b.Identify any unfamiliar or unusual words and write these down in the first column of your table; for example, ‘volume’, ‘capacity’, ‘surface area’, ‘cone’, ‘frustum’, etc.
  • c.In the second column, write down your own explanation for the word that makes sense to you. It does not have to be complete yet, or entirely correct, as you will be able to make changes to it as your understanding grows.
  • d.In the third column, write down the explanation that the book or your teacher gives for the word.
  • e.In the final column, make a drawing or sketch of what the word means that makes sense to you. Again, it does not have to be complete yet, or entirely correct, as you will be able to make changes to it as your understanding grows.

Part 2: Reflecting on your learning

This part of the activity asks you to think about your learning so you can become better at, and feel better about, learning mathematics.

  • a.What did you find easy or difficult about Part 1 of this activity?
  • b.What did you like about this activity?
  • c.What mathematics did you learn from this activity?
  • d.What did you learn about how you (could) learn mathematics?

Case Study 1: Teacher Foolan reflects on using Activity 1

I was rather shaken by reading about mathematical trauma – I could immediately think of several students who might be experiencing this. I also have to admit that until now I have taken the stance that some students ‘get it’ and others do not. Perhaps this is because I have never struggled with mathematics that much and never in a really negative way – and hence became a mathematician and a mathematics teacher. So before starting on this activity, I made myself promise I would really try to support students in making their own choices.

I had expected this activity to require quite a bit of prompting by me to get them to engage, but they all got busy over their books and started finding words. It seemed they knew exactly where to look!

After a few minutes, Mina asked whether they had to identify only the ones that they did not clearly understand. Because I wanted them to make their own choices (that promise!), I suggested that they could do what they felt was best and that it would be nice if we all could share their ideas, thoughts and descriptions about the words they had selected. This sharing of ideas led to interesting mathematical discussions. It also brought out some of the misconceptions that the students had and made it possible to discuss those in an informal way.

For example we had a great conversation about the term ‘volume’: Rohit described volume as what can be put inside a figure; Sohan said volume is what a solid is made of; Rina said volume is the amount of liquid it can hold. The discussion that followed was lively with students willing to share their ideas and I was pleased to see that students did not appear to be crushed by others commenting on their ideas or suggesting other descriptions. Several concepts were talked about and clarified in the process.

Pause for thought

When you do such an exercise with your class, reflect afterwards on what went well and what went less well. Consider the questions that led to the students being interested and being able to get on and those where you needed to clarify. Such reflection always helps with finding a set of good questions you can ask again and again, which helps you engage the students to find mathematics interesting and enjoyable. If they do not understand and cannot do something, they are less likely to become involved. Use this reflective exercise every time you undertake the activities, noting as Teacher Foolan did some quite small things that made a difference.

Good questions to trigger this reflection are:

  • How did it go with your class?
  • What questions did you use to probe your students’ understanding?
  • Did you feel you had to intervene at any point?
  • What points did you feel you had to reinforce?

2 Composing and decomposing combined shapes and solids

Working with combined shapes and solids is a good application of using analytical and logical thinking – which is a very mathematical activity in its own right. Composing and decomposing combined solids and shapes is also great for valuing students’ contributions and thinking, because there are normally many ways to get to an answer! This means that:

  • the students can be creative in their thinking
  • there are choices to be made
  • the students will experience a sense of being able to be in control of their own thinking and learning.

Activity 2 asks your students to bring their own examples from home and think about different ways to work on the mathematics involved. It requires students to exchange their ideas with other students. They could be working in pairs or small groups.

Activity 2: Composing and decomposing familiar combined shapes and solids

Described image

Have you ever really observed all the different pots, pans and other utensils that are used in kitchens and at home? If you have, you may have found that they are a rich source for thinking about mathematics. In this activity you will explore their shapes as a combination of simple shapes and solids.

Ask each student to bring any one utensil to class; for example, a spoon, glass, bowl (katori), container (of any shape), bottle, serving spoon (karchi), wok, pan, etc.

Part 1: The mathematical activity

  1. Imagine you have to recreate the utensil you have brought using some commonly known shapes and solids. In how many ways could you do this?

    For example, one way to make a hollow rectangle like the one below would be make the shape of the larger rectangle and then cut out the smaller rectangle, leaving the blue hollow rectangle.

Described image
  1. As in the example above, describe the shapes and solids shown in the images below.
Described image
Described image
  1. In how many ways could you work out the surface area of the different objects you brought to the class? You should get the same answer in all cases.
  2. In how many ways could you work out the volume of the different containers that you brought to the class? You should get the same answer in all cases.

Part 2: Reflecting on your learning

This part of the activity asks you to think about your learning so you can become better at, and feel better about, learning mathematics.

  • a.What did you find easy or difficult about Part 1 of this activity?
  • b.What did you like about this activity?
  • c.What mathematics did you learn from this activity?
  • d.What did you learn about how you (could) learn mathematics?

Case Study 2: Teacher Foolan reflects on using Activity 2

This activity made me realise how much more students engage with their learning when they use something that they bring to school. It seems it gives them automatic ownership of their learning! There was a lot of excitement when the students entered the classroom, showing the objects they had brought with them, all of them wanting to know what exactly they were expected to do with them.

When the activity was given, they were grouped in fours so that they could have a variety of objects to investigate. I told them they were to pool their objects, but that I first wanted them to think about the questions individually. They were asked to each keep notes to talk about their thinking later in the group discussion. I insisted on this individual work because I wanted them to become aware of their own mathematical thinking power, and develop and value their own ideas. I wanted them to feel in control of their own thinking. If they were stuck with thinking about one object, they could select another one.

After about ten minutes I asked them to talk to each other about their answers. I told them that at this point they did not actually have to find the areas or volumes that they just had to talk about what shapes they could identify, or decompose their object into, in order to find the area or volume. I did not want them caught up in calculations and getting stressed about not remembering formulae – I wanted them to think about the thinking process involved in working with combined solids.

The discussion over the idli maker turned out rather intense because some decided that they were hemispheres and there were a few who said that they were not exactly half-spheres – they felt they were part of spheres. I noticed that some of the students were bridging the gap between their concrete understanding about shapes, solids, volumes and area by explaining their thinking while feeling and touching the utensils.

I was especially glad to hear the way that the students listened to each other. For some of the objects, the task was more difficult. One student, who is otherwise quite quiet and reticent in class, offered up a helpful idea in her group about two semi-circles actually making up a whole sphere, and I could see her pleasure when the other students praised her contribution – perhaps this will help her build her belief that she can do mathematics.

Pause for thought

How did it go when you tried this activity with your class? What questions did you use to probe your students’ understanding? Did you feel you had to intervene at any point? What points did you feel you had to reinforce? Did you modify the task in any way like Teacher Foolan did? If so, what was your reasoning for doing so? How did the students respond to the reflection questions?

3 Coping with daunting mathematical writing

When you look at the solved examples of mathematics problems in a textbook, they can look daunting. To students, they may look like a string of alien symbols that are supposed to make sense – a feeling that can be very intimidating to students. This is not restricted to the chapters on calculating area, volume and surface area of combined solids and shapes! The examples do make sense once you engage with the writing and the deciphering of the mathematical symbols.

To help students overcome that sense of feeling overwhelmed by the symbolic notation of mathematics, it may help if they can identify what makes an example easy or difficult, and then make their own easy and difficult examples. Doing this can de-mystify the mathematical writing of symbols and offer them a gentle way into making sense of mathematical symbols. Making up their own examples also lets the students create mathematics themselves, gives them some control over their own learning and thus creates a sense of ownership that can increase engagement and participation. Another added benefit is that, as a teacher, you end up with lots of examples to work with and exchange in the classroom!

Activities 4 and 5 ask students to have a go at identifying, characterising and devising easy and difficult examples. This approach works in any area of mathematics learning. The topic of combined shapes and solids has its own particular challenge of having to use rather complicated formulae for calculating area and volume of specific shapes and solids.

To prepare and support students with the specific symbolic writing demands of this, Activity 3 asks them first to write their own formulae booklet with illustrations. The students could add to this booklet any other formulae they come across in their mathematics learning, in which case it might be good to work on loose paper sheets that can then be added to and re-ordered when appropriate. Having formulae to hand also reduces the stress students might be experiencing in having to remember formulae and can let them focus on the thinking process that is required for their calculations.

Activity 3: Making your own formulae booklet

Advise your students that this activity is similar to Activity 1 but they are now asked to focus on mathematical formulae rather than words. They should have a page for each formula as they will be adding pages and will want to organise the formulae over time into an order that makes sense.

Look at the chapter in your textbook about area, volume or surface area.

  • a.Design a page with at least four sections. (Read through this activity before you decide on the layout of that page.)
  • b.Identify any formulae you come across and write them near the top of the page.
  • c.Above this, write down what this formula is for.
  • d.If you find it helpful, write down the explanation that the book or your teacher gives for why or how this formula works.
  • e.Now write down your own explanation that makes sense to you. Use language and examples that make sense to you. It does not have to be complete yet, or entirely correct, because you will be able to make changes to it as your understanding grows.
  • f.Now make a drawing or sketch to give an illustration of what the word means that makes sense to you. Again, it does not have to be complete yet, or entirely correct, because you will be able to make changes to it as your understanding grows.

Activity 4: What makes a question easy, average or difficult?

Organise the class into groups of three where each of them works on one example, but where they discuss what they are doing.

Part 1: The mathematical activity

Look at the solved examples and questions in the chapter in your textbook about volume and surface area of combined solids.

  • a.Identify and agree on one easy, one average and one difficult solved example. Allocate one of these to each student in the group who is now responsible for recording the discussions about that example.
  • b.Draw the object you chose in (a). State in your own words what shapes and solids this object consists of (that is, decompose the combined solid into single solids).
  • c.Look at your formulae booklet, your dictionary and the drawing. Can you identify which parts of the worked out example relate to the parts of your drawing?
  • d.When you have all discussed and recorded your thoughts about the three worked out examples, think about what is the same and what is different between an easy, an average and a difficult example. What is it that makes an example easy or difficult? Make a note of your thoughts
  • e.Look at your difficult example. Work together to make it even harder by adding or changing something.

To bring the class back together, discuss (d) and (e) to find out how far students have been able to articulate what factors make an example easy or difficult, and what inventive ideas they have about making an example even harder. You could get the class to vote on which example is the most difficult and then set that for homework!

Part 2: Reflecting on your learning

This part of the activity asks you to think about your learning so you can become better at, and feel better about, learning mathematics.

  • a.What did you find easy or difficult about Part 1 of this activity?
  • b.What did you like about this activity?
  • c.What mathematics did you learn from this activity?
  • d.What did you learn about how you (could) learn mathematics?

Activity 5: Making your own mathematical examples

Part 1: The mathematical activity

Ask the students to imagine that they are a writer of questions for mathematics examinations and they have been asked to devise three questions on the topic of surface area and volume of combined solids: one easy, one average and one difficult question. Give them the following instructions:

  • a.Write the questions. Remember you have to provide solutions as well!
  • b.Exchange your examination questions with another student in the classroom and solve each other’s questions. Check the answers against the solutions.
  • c.Discuss with your neighbour what makes a question easy or difficult. Discuss with your neighbour good methods to tackle such questions. Write these methods down.

Part 2: Reflecting on your learning

This part of the activity asks you to think about your learning so you can become better at, and feel better about, learning mathematics.

  • a.What did you find easy or difficult about Part 1 of this activity?
  • b.What did you like about this activity?
  • c.What mathematics did you learn from this activity?
  • d.What did you learn about how you (could) learn mathematics?

Case Study 3: Teacher Haresh reflects on using Activities 3–5

Activity 3 was given to the students as an independent exercise and I went around observing how they were able to do it. They identified almost all the formulae well and wrote down the shapes that they represented, but when it came down to drawing and writing down in their own words what it meant to them, they had some problems.

To help them become more aware of their own learning, and to be able to pinpoint what it was they were stuck on, I asked the students to note down their thoughts about their problems at whatever point they were, so that they could contribute to a discussion. The main issue appeared to be about the actual drawing of three-dimensional solids. Because I wanted the students to know that there is not just one correct way of doing this, I called the students who had been able to draw a certain figure to come and draw it on the board.

Once the students had some ideas about how to draw a three-dimensional solid, and had practised it themselves, we went on to discuss the explanations given. I asked all those who had different explanations about a certain formulae to share their thoughts and ideas so that all of the students could hear ideas and think about what makes a question easy or difficult.

We did Activity 4 over two periods because they got so engaged with the activity. They worked on their own but talked to their neighbour about the choices they had made. They used their dictionary and formulae booklet without prompting and I did notice students using their fingers to point and keep track of what part of the example related to what formulae. I also saw students covering up part of the drawings in order to ignore the bits they were not working on, so that they could focus on the parts the calculations were about.

Mona said if only they could take such a dictionary and formulae booklet to the exam! We then had a discussion about how to try to remember the formulae using logical thinking: since these solids were regular figures, the lateral surface area of most was perimeter times height and the volume was base area times the height. We also discussed how this relates to going from two to three dimensions, and why some questions were difficult for some and why others were easier. Ramona said they were all easy, so I asked her to work on the last question to try to make it harder.

I gave them the first part of Activity 5 as a homework assignment and I told them that they had to prepare the test questions for their friends, although who would get to solve whose would be a mystery. They came back the next day enthusiastically with their questions, happy that they – rather than me, or an examination board – were setting the test. To my surprise they did not even complain when I told them that they would all get different questions to answer! I distributed their papers randomly, although I did try to match the difficulty level to individual students’ abilities. I had to swap two papers when I got to the end as I found that I was giving Mona her own question back, and a couple of students had to double up as that day there were more students in class. They settled down to work on the problems. The class especially liked that the test was marked by the originator of the questions and they enjoyed doing the marking.

The activity allowed them to pinpoint what it actually was that made a question hard. Instead of saying the whole topic was difficult to do, they agreed it was only the questions involving a frustum – and not because of its shape but because of its complicated formula, which is nearly impossible to memorise! We discussed how we could avoid memorising the formula, especially as so many mistakes are made with writing it down from memory. We talked about how the formula was derived from other, more simple formulae, and that working through that logical process means you do not have to memorise the impossible-to-remember formula. I think this helped some students, but there still were those who insisted on learning the formula.

Doing all these activities did take a considerable amount of time, but I think it was well worth it. The students learned a lot of mathematics, seemed more relaxed and in control of their learning, and engaged actively with the tasks. All students, whatever their attainment, could do the task and could learn at their own pace and level. They had to think, be creative and make their own decisions. They really seemed to enjoy doing the mathematics and there were smiling faces and even laughter in the classroom – which I absolutely loved. I think they will also remember the mathematics they have learned more, which will save me time in the long run because I will not have to revisit the topic as often!

Pause for thought

How did it go with your class? What questions did you use to probe your students’ understanding? Did you feel you had to intervene at any point? What points did you feel you had to reinforce? Did you modify the task in any way like Teacher Haresh did? If so, what was your reasoning for doing so?

4 Summary

Described image

This unit has asked you to explore how your students find the volumes of combinations of solids. It has discussed ways that students can feel more involved in the process of learning mathematics, and how they can understand that mathematics is about real-life ideas, not just formulae in a textbook. You have learned how to support students in making choices in mathematics that can allow them to feel in control of their learning: choices about how to solve problems and how to explain ideas in their own words. Making choices means that they have to think through these ideas and this makes them learn more effectively and own that learning. They no longer feel that they are doing something that really has nothing to do with them.

These approaches are important because many students find learning mathematics so traumatic that they simply do not want to think about it. They worry so much about using the one right process to get the one right answer that they are not able to think about the mathematics. They worry that they will look foolish if they give the wrong answer so they would rather not try. Overcoming these widely held beliefs will take time and persistence, but making sure that your students are involved in their lessons using the ways described in this unit will help them know that they can do mathematics.

Identify three techniques or strategies you have learned in this unit that you might use in your classroom and two ideas that you want to explore further.

5 Resources

Resource 1: NCF/NCFTE teaching requirements

The learning in this unit links to the NCF (2005) and NCFTE (2009) teaching requirements as specified below:

  • View learners as active participants in their own learning and not as mere recipients of knowledge; how to encourage their capacity to construct knowledge; how to shift learning away from rote methods.
  • Let students see mathematics as something to talk about, to communicate through, to discuss among themselves, to work together on.
  • Let students use abstractions to perceive relationships, to see structures.
  • Engage with the curriculum, syllabuses and textbooks critically by examining them rather than taking them as ‘given’ and accepted without question.

References

Lange, T. and Meaney, T. (2011) ‘I actually started to scream: emotional and mathematical trauma from doing school mathematics homework’, Educational Studies In Mathematics, vol. 77, no. 1, pp. 35–51.
National Council of Educational Research and Training (2005) National Curriculum Framework (NCF). New Delhi: NCERT.
National Council for Teacher Education (2009) National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education [Online], New Delhi, NCTE. Available at http://www.ncte-india.org/ publicnotice/ NCFTE_2010.pdf (Accessed 16 January 2014).
National Council of Educational Research and Training (2012a) Mathematics Textbook for Class IX. New Delhi: NCERT.
National Council of Educational Research and Training (2012b) Mathematics Textbook for Class X. New Delhi: NCERT.

Acknowledgements

The content of this teacher development unit was developed collaboratively and incrementally by the following educators and academics from India and The Open University (UK) who discussed various drafts, including the feedback from Indian and UK critical readers: Els De Geest, Anjali Gupte, Clare Lee and Atul Nischal.

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/.

The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to Creative Commons Licence). Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this unit:

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following:

Introduction image: Taj Mahal © Andrew Gray/Flickr: http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/ by-sa/ 2.0/ deed.en.

Activity 2: Photo by Adam Jones adamjones.freeservers.com: http://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/ File:Seller_of_Pots_and_Pans_-_Tiruvannamalai_-_India.JPG This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licence.

Spoons © Saharasav http://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/ File:Keiryo_spoons.jpg This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licence.

Cooker Bhaskaranaidu http://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/ File:Idli_coocker.JPG. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licence.

Summary photograph: courtesy of Clare Lee.

Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.