Identify, describe and sort 3-D shapes - Teaching Presentation - Year 3

This presentation provides three days of teaching that cover the objectives:

• Describe, name and sort 3-D shapes.
• Describe, name and sort 3-D shapes using a Carroll diagram.
• Count faces, vertices and edges of 3-D shapes.

It includes starter activities, whole class teaching, group activities, practice sheets and mastery questions. It can be used on a variety of interactive whiteboards.

Day 1 Teaching
Hold up a cube. How many edges, vertices and faces does it have? Children feedback. Introduce the word polyhedron. Explain that it is a solid shape with flat faces and no curved faces. Hide a 3-D shape (a cube, cuboid, cylinder, sphere, cone or pyramid) in a feely bag. A succession of children describes the shape to their classmates. Discuss which shape it could/ couldn’t be from their clues.

Day 2 Teaching
Draw a labelled Carroll diagram. Ask a child to pick a 3-D shape from a box and show it. What’s the name of this shape? Where should it go on the diagram? Children discuss properties and feedback. Talk children through the criteria that fit. Place/ draw the shape in. Repeat with other shapes.

Day 3 Teaching
Show an Egyptian pyramid. Here is a smaller version of the shape… Pass several square-based pyramids round class. Children share descriptions; draw out type and number of faces, numbers of vertices (corners) and edges. Draw a table to record this and fill it in. Look at (but don’t describe in detail) other pyramids.

This teaching is part of Hamilton’s Year 3 Shape block. Each Hamilton maths block contains a complete set of planning and resources to teach a term’s worth of objectives for one of the National Curriculum for England’s maths areas.