I tutor math once a week for a fifth grade Spanish immersion class in a local public elementary school. This week, we worked on calculating the area of a triangle. The students had a variety of triangles to work with - most not right triangles.
In general, geometry has been more interesting to the students than the other topics we have worked on (multiplication, fractions and decimals). The challenge this week, though, was to figure out how to write the area of the triangle as an expression (i.e. A = 1/2bh). For one, the students are not comfortable multiplying by 1/2. They would rather divide by 2. I believe that this is the first experience for the class with algebraic expressions. For these students, even assigning different letters for the base and height (instead of b and h) was bewildering.
I also find it really interesting to see the combined challenge of language (the students I work with often do not have a strong handle on English - and we work in English if the main lesson is in English) and learning math concepts. Sometimes it is difficult assess why a student does not understand a concept, or even if they understand but cannot find the words.
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