Instructor Notes:

For materials preparations, click ‘Back to Main Menu’ button and select ‘Getting Started – EDC Setup’.

Read Every Day Counts Teacher’s Guide, Kanter and Gillespie, Great Source, 2005 or 2012 edition, p. 48-49.

November’s ABC pattern of rectangle, square, rhombus, with dots on the even numbers, reinforces multiples of two while helping students also learn to count with ease by threes to 30. Again, at the beginning of the month, we can ask “What do you see?” and see what students say.

As students name the quadrilaterals that they recognize, don’t miss the chance to make the rectangle the focus of discussion. Many third graders believe that a rectangle must have two long sides and two short sides along with square corners. They may be surprised to learn that any 4-sided figure with 4 right angles is a rectangle regardless of the length of its sides. This means, often to some students’ surprise, that squares, with their four right angles, are members of the rectangle family. Later in the month, we can focus on the rhombus with 4 equal sides and talk about why squares belong to both the rectangle and the rhombus family.