Year 4 Geometry Programme of Study Here are the new requirements for Geometry in Year 4. They come in two sub-categories; Properties of Shapes and Position and Direction. Properties of shapes Pupils should be taught to: •    compare and classify geometric shapes, including quadrilaterals and triangles, based on their properties and sizes •    identify acute and obtuse angles and compare and order angles up to two right angles by size •    identify lines of symmetry in 2-D shapes presented in different orientations •    complete a simple symmetric figure with respect to a specific line of symmetry. Position and direction Pupils should be taught to: •    describe positions on a 2-D grid as coordinates in the first quadrant •    describe movements between positions as translations of a given unit to the left/right and up/down •    plot specified points and draw sides to complete a given polygon. What’s new and comments The geometry section is divided into two parts in Year 4; ‘Properties of shapes’ and ‘Position and direction’. There are no significant changes in the Properties of shapes section, although symmetry has far less emphasis in Year 3 than it used to and is only really introduced in Year 4. The main change is the introduction of translations. Children should be becoming familiar with the idea that shapes belong to groups or classes. For example, there is a group of shapes called polygons. These are flat (2-D) shapes that have straight sides. The names of many of these end in 'agon' such as pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, but there are other names that do not, such as square, rectangle, quadrilateral. There is a similar group of 3-D shapes (polyhedra - plural of polyhedron) that end in 'hedron' such as octahedron, dodecahedron, but not all names of polyhedra end this way, for example cube, cuboid and pyramid. They also need to be aware that groups of shapes are often subsets of other shapes. For example, squares are part of the group of rectangles, rectangles are part of the group of parallelograms, cylinders and cuboids are part of the group of prisms. Children also need to know that in a polyhedron: the faces are flat and polygonal and surrounded by edges an edge is a straight line between two faces a vertex is a point where three or more edges meet and that a polygon is a 2-D shape that is closed (i.e. no gaps in its perimeter), and has three or more sides. Also that a regular polygon has equal sides and equal angles. Go to Year 4 Geometry