What Shape and Colour?

'What Shape and Colour?' printed from https://nrich.maths.org/

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What Shape and Colour?

Have a look at the picture below.

What do you see?

What do you notice?

What do you wonder?

Insert the correct shapes

What would you draw in the empty boxes?

How could you extend the table so that it has more rows or more columns?

Why do this problem?

This problem will help children to build and recognise table structure and at the same time it will reinforce the names of some common 2D shapes.

Possible approach

Put up the image for all to see and ask the three opening questions:

What do you see?
What do you notice?
What do you wonder?

Give learners chance to talk in pairs, and then bring everyone together to share thoughts, ideas and questions. Try to keep a record of 'wonderings' on the board to come back to later. Use the discussion to draw out the table structure so that children can see why there is a blue triangle in that particular cell, for example.

You may well find that the idea of drawing shapes into the empty cells comes up naturally, but if not, pose the question specifically. You could give out copies of this sheet, one for each pair, and invite them to complete the table.

Bring them together to talk about their solution and invite some pairs to explain how they went about filling in the table. Of course they will not necessarily have added shapes in the same order and you could focus on the fact that there are many different ways of doing it. There may be some discussion about whether, for example, all the triangles have to be exactly the same shape and size, and just differ in colour. Some children might argue that the triangle picture in the row heading means any triangle.

You could then ask for suggestions about how the table could be extended. Share a few ideas as a whole group and then give learners time to add their own way to their table. The resulting images would make a lovely wall display.

Key questions

What shapes will go in this row? How do you know?
What colour shapes will go in this column? How do you know?
What might go in this box? How do you know?

Possible extension

A challenging extension to this problem would be the Teddy Town investigation.

Possible support

You may wish to provide pictures of the missing shapes for some children. This sheet has the grid on it with the missing shapes underneath, which children could cut out and place in the boxes.