Don’t Cause This Misconception When Teaching Angles!

We all have started out teaching right angles like this…

“Okay, class this is a right angle.”

But, have we left it at that and gone on to teach other terms such as acute and obtuse?

Then students are left to draw their own conclusions when faced with this.

Obviously to a child, this is a left angle because it is facing the opposite direction and the opposite of right is left!

Or if left to their own conclusions, this is a left, down angle.

And, yes, all of the angles pictured above are in fact…right angles.

It is up to you to make sure students see angles in lots of different directions so that they do not form misconceptions about angles.

So how can students test to make sure that right angles are, in fact, right.  Well, they can just use a paper corner such as a sticky note or the corner of their paper.

Each time they come across an angle they can put the paper corner in the angle to know if it fits exactly.  If it fits exactly, it is right!  If it covers one of the sides (rays) of the angle, it is acute and if one of the rays of the angle sticks out, it is obtuse…but that is another post for another day 🙂