Shapes, Angles and Lines
Year 3 geometry covers naming 2-D shapes by their sides, measuring the perimeter, and spotting different kinds of lines and angles.
Practise Shapes, Angles and Lines
Have a guess, even if you're not sure. Get one wrong and we'll show you why, so every miss is a chance to learn.
Timed practice
The same practice, just with a gentle clock. Pick a length and see how many you can answer.
Good to know
Here is your shape and angle spotter to lean on while you practise.
2D shapes
Angle types
For grown-ups
Children identify horizontal, vertical, parallel and perpendicular lines, recognise right angles, and compare other angles to a right angle. Every question shows the shape, lines or angle to look at, so the reasoning is about what your child can see rather than memorising definitions.
What is in this topic
- Naming 2-D shapes by their number of sides
- Working out the perimeter of a shape
- Horizontal, vertical, parallel and perpendicular lines
- Recognising right angles
- Comparing angles to a right angle
How to help your child with shapes, angles and lines
Geometry sticks fastest when it is something you point at in the real world, not just words on a card, so go looking for shapes and corners together.
- Count the sides out loud to name a shape. Trace round the edge with a finger: 3 sides is a triangle, 4 a square or rectangle, 5 a pentagon, 6 a hexagon. The number of sides is the whole game.
- Use the corner of a book or a piece of paper as a right-angle checker. Hold it into a corner: if it fits perfectly the angle is a right angle, a quarter turn, like the corner of a door.
- Compare every other angle to that right angle. If the corner is more open than the book corner it is bigger than a right angle; if it is more closed, it is smaller. That comparison matters more than any name.
- Spot the line types around the house. A windowsill is horizontal, a door edge is vertical, the cross of a window frame is perpendicular (two lines meeting at a right angle), and railway tracks or ladder sides are parallel (always the same distance apart, never meeting).
Where children get stuck
The most common trip-up is judging an angle by the length of its lines instead of how open it is. A child will say a wide angle drawn with short lines is small, and a narrow angle drawn with long lines is big. It is the amount of turn between the two lines that counts, not how long they are. Drawing the same angle once with short arms and once with long arms shows that the opening has not changed at all.
The other wobble is muddling parallel and perpendicular. A quick way to keep them apart: parallel lines are like two friends walking side by side, always the same gap apart and never meeting, while perpendicular lines cross and make a right angle where they meet, like a plus sign or the corner of a square. Ask which one makes a neat square corner, and they will land on perpendicular.