Mathematics Angles Lesson plan

Name & Student Number: Claudia Svilans 2181607

Curriculum (Learning) Area of Lesson: Mathematics
Specific Topic of Lesson: Angles
Year Level/s: 6/7

Lesson Context (1 paragraph)

Students have completed a unit on 3D shapes (top, side and front view, naming and
creating shapes, and making physical 3D block shapes and drawing them on isometric
paper). Students have had one introductory lesson on angles where they discussed
what examples of angles are evident in the real world, and they performed in a pre-test
for the teacher to assess their current knowledge, understanding and skills. Many
students lacked an understanding in basic knowledge (what makes up an angle,
assessing how to calculate angles with letters e.g. BCA, ABC, CAB, etc, finding
unknown angles, and explaining the total angle sum of a triangle). For this lesson,
students will be focusing on the reasoning behind the angle sum of a triangle and how
this connects to a straight line, and complementary and supplementary angles. Students
will be developing their problem solving and reasoning with angles. By the end of the
lesson, students (to a greater degree) can find the size of unknown angles and draw
accurate conclusions about angle facts. Students need to know about angles because in
the real world, they are all around us and are useful in our daily lives (athletes using
them to enhance performance, carpenters to make furniture, or artists to sketch portraits
and paintings).

Learning Objectives
As appropriate, these should be based on the Australian Curriculum. You can include specific references to
ACARA in parentheses where you have taken an objective verbatim (ACMMG006), or use language like “Adapted
from..” if you have made some changes to statements from ACARA, but been guided by these.

As a result of engaging with the lesson, students will:

understand that (Concepts, principles, “big ideas”. No more than 1 or 2 for a single lesson. Make sure your
objectives are statements that work in the form, Students will understand that…)

Students understand why the angle sum of a triangle is 180° and use this to find the angle sum of
a quadrilateral (ACMMG166 - Scootle )

Students understand numerical problems that involve angles.

know (e.g. facts, vocabulary, dates, information) be able to (do) (Skills, processes)
Students know types of triangles and the Investigate, with and without digital technologies,
differences between them. angles on a straight line, angles at a point and
vertically opposite angles. Use results to find
Students know what complementary and unknown angles (ACMMG141 - Scootle )
supplementary angles are.
Classify triangles according to their side
and angle properties and describe
quadrilaterals(ACMMG165 - Scootle )
 Students can find unknown angles through
mathematical reasoning.

Students can use concrete materials to solve the

angle sum of a triangle.

Essential Questions (1-3 only; these should help students engage with the “big ideas” or understandings)
What are complementary and supplementary angles?

Is there mathematical reasoning behind all triangle’s angles and a straight line?

Lesson Plan
Lesson Sequence
1. Angles in a triangle (20 minutes)- To begin the lesson, students will be participating in a
practical activity. Students will have one A4 coloured paper each. On their coloured paper they
will be drawing an equilateral triangle (half the page) and find the total sum of the angles by
cutting each angle out which forms a straight line (180 degrees). These instructions will be on
the board for students to follow. The teacher will model the activity for students who need extra
support in order for them to solve the angle sum of a triangle for mathematical competency
(some triangles already drawn up for students who would struggle with this). In addition, the
use of manipulatives will support students learning by having visuals in-front of them which
fosters their mathematical understanding and thinking skills (being able to see what the
learning is improves their mental processes to know the “why” to make sense of math
questions).
There will be a discussion after students have completed the first part of the activity. Some
questions to pose to students:
- When you combined the angles together what did it form?
- What is the definition of an equilateral triangle? What does this mean for its angles?
- Does this have the same outcome with different types of triangles? What angle amounts
did you come up with for the other triangles? What does this tell us about the angle sum of
a triangle?

2. Next, the teacher will be explicitly teaching the students about what complementary and
supplementary angles are. Complementary angles are ones that add up to 90 degrees.
Supplementary angles are angles that add up to 180 degrees. “From the picture, what does the
word sum mean- addition so adding angles up (in this case) to get a total number (90 or 180
degrees)”. “There were these types of questions in our angles pre-test. Some answers were
just miscalculations with numbers, then others didn’t understand what the question was asking
from them/ couldn’t see that the total angle added up to 90, 180, or 360 degrees. This lesson is
to practice finding the unknown, but only for angles with 90 and 180 degrees, so if you need
help then just ask”.

3. Students have complementary and supplementary questions (add the pairs of angles up,
finding the complementary and supplementary angle to another angle, and finding the
unknown) which require critical thinking (using number processes- addition) to solve for an
answer. Students must remember the difference between the two to progress through the
questions. Students need to draw the picture in their books and then show their working out for
the unknown questions (they can come back to these when they are stuck with the whole
question laid out in their book). If students complete all these questions correctly, they can then
 move onto an extension task of drawing the first letter of their name, drawing angles on the
inside, and then using a protractor to find the angle amounts. It is important for students to
know the fundamentals (finding an unknown with angles) as this will solidify their understanding
with geometry. This will then help them move towards algebra and trigonometry in their future
schooling.

Lesson Closure/ Check for Understanding

How will you know whether students have achieved your lesson objectives?
To collect feedback from the students, I will be putting a stamp in their book which has three
different faces (happy, okay, and puzzled, picture below). They need to colour in a face to
describe how they felt about the lesson and explain why. This will inform me on what went
well and what could be adjusted for future lessons to ensure maximum learning is being
achieved. I will also collect their books after the lesson to check how they went with the
problems and if there are misconceptions that need to be cleared up.

Appendix
Appendix 1: Questions 1, 2, and 3 for students about complementary and supplementary angles.
This includes examining pairs of angles and finding the opposite angle size to add up to a
complementary or supplementary angle.
Appendix 2: Students to solve the unknown angle for complementary and supplementary
problems. Remembering complementary are 90 degrees (b, e, g, i) and supplementary are 180
degrees (a, c, d, f, h).

Appendix 3: Extension activity. Students draw the first letter of their name and fill the inside with
angles. Then they can use a protractor to measure the angles and colour them in.