Shape up your children's understanding of 2D shapes with this series of 2D Shape lessons for Year 3! Help them identify a variety of 2D shapes and describe their properties, and teach them about perimeter, tangrams and much more.

With lesson plans, engaging slides, differentiated worksheets, and other helpful resources, these downloadable Key Stage 2 2D Shape lessons will develop your class's understanding of shapes and how to identify, describe and sort them, all through a series of fun activities.

Recognising Shapes

The first lesson in this series encourages your class to complete a variety of 2D shape activities including recognising a variety of 2D shapes and describing their properties. The included slides will show your class some regular 2D shapes and challenge them to describe the properties of shapes. Your class will be encouraged to reference to the number of sides and angles each shape has when explaining how they identified them. The independent activities then allow them to reinforce this independently. There is also the opportunity to go on a shape hunt!

This downloadable lesson contains a lesson plan, slideshow presentation and printable teaching resources.

Regular and Irregular Polygons

This lesson gives your class the chance to explore the difference between regular and irregular polygons. The included slideshow presentation gives your children opportunities to identify shapes that are regular and irregular, as well as explaining the term ‘polygon’ and how this can be applied to regular and irregular shapes. The activities then give your class the chance to draw some irregular polygons for themselves, or even create ‘human shapes’!

This downloadable lesson contains a lesson plan, slideshow presentation and printable teaching resources.

Finding Perimeters

A farmer needs some help working out how much fencing to buy for her enclosures in this lesson! Your class will explore what the word ‘perimeter’ means before looking at how to calculate the perimeter of rectilinear shapes. Starting with counting squares, they can then progress to measuring shapes and calculating the perimeter from the length and width of the shapes.

This downloadable lesson includes a lesson plan, slideshow presentation and printable teaching resources.

Sorting Shapes

Now that your children have had plenty of opportunities to refresh and expand their knowledge of 2D shapes, they will sort shapes according to their properties, including the number and length of sides, angles, and lines of symmetry. Your class will describe a variety of shapes to a partner before sorting shapes of their own according to various criteria.

This downloadable Sorting Shapes Year 3 Maths lesson contains a lesson plan, slideshow presentation and printable teaching resources.

Tangrams

The final lesson in this 2D shape series puts your class's shape problem-solving skills to the test as they use tangrams to create a variety of shapes and pictures. Children will be given a variety of challenges to work through as they move the pieces of the tangram around to make pictures of animals, people and objects, as well as other 2D shapes.

This downloadable Tangrams KS2 Year 3 lesson includes a lesson plan, slideshow presentation and printable teaching resources.