Teaching Angles

A very handy tool I have come across lately for my students is a manipulative known as ‘Anglegs’.

Now, Anglegs are more or less exactly what they sound like: a simple device to teach Angles. When beginning Geometry units for kids, it is always helpful to make ideas as concrete as possible. As many parents and teachers know, Geometry is a place in math where things begin to get abstract. It is where math on the whole in its entirety gets harder to picture, understand, or even imagine. While the subject is highly applicable to many tasks and occupations, the majority of these (engineering, architecture, construction work, etc) do not become relevant until later, making it a challenging subject to grasp.

Anglegs are one tool that makes this understanding easier. Essentially, they are plastic rods of varying lengths and colors that snap together in order to form any desired type of angle: right, acute, straight, obtuse, etc, or to create and measure any angle in between. A few examples are shown below from a lesson I recently shared with my students on the different types of angles:

Right

Acute

Straight

Obtuse

By manipulating the rods themselves it becomes much easier for kids to place and recall the differences between them. Much easier, even, than giving them pre-cut shapes to carry around the room looking for specific types of angles, with a lot more reasoning involved. If you are wondering if it is necessary to buy Anglegs in order to achieve this, the answer is absolutely not. 🙂 It is very easy to make them with popsicle sticks or tongue depressors and paper fasteners (with a little bit of drilling involved). If you’d just assume buy the tool, though, they are fairly inexpensive and readily available on Amazon here.

Happy Angling!!