The Sixth Grade Students’Understanding Of The Sector

Sector is not very important in junior high school tests. However the students’ understanding of the sector is very week. From the existing researches, we can not find many researches about sector.This study investigated248six grade students to explore their understanding of sector from the perspective of concept and formula. This study also investigated some students and mathematics teachers to know their Van Hiele geometry thinking level. From this study we can get the following conclusions:1) Most students can only get the level1, while some students still stay the level0. Only a few students can get the level2and level3.2) As to the understanding of the concept of sector, girls are more likely to learn the concept from the local perspective, whose level of understanding is higher than boys. More boys think the circle to be a sector, but the girls don’t.3) Almost all students have difficulty in learning the area formulas of sector. They can not understand where the two formulas come from.4) Most students can understand the relationship between the sector and the circle. They do know the fact that sector is part of a circle.5) Girls do well than boys in drawing Fan-shaped statistical figure. However boys are better at calculating the angles of the sectors in a Fan-shaped statistical figure.6) In the subject of using cutting and completing methods to calculate the sector area, boys do better than girls.7) In the subject of drawing new designs, girls seems to have good innovation.At last, the results of this study provide mathematics teachers with further insight into how to improve students’understanding of sector.