Education 325 Blog

Hey Jess! I hope you're having a great week! Measurement Misconceptions Why do you think the students are having difficulty? The students are not using the ruler properly causing confusion. They are not realizing that the ruler shows different units of measurement. What misunderstandings are they demonstrating? While they understood where to place the ruler to begin measuring, they were thrown off by different lines leading to different units of measurement. Madison wanted to start at zero rather than one. The students seem to be misunderstanding the general layout of a ruler and could benefit from a review of what everything on the ruler means. As teachers, it is easy to assume that students know these things, but we need to be careful to look out for small, simple misunderstandings like this. Have you witnessed any students experiencing some of these same difficulties? Unfortunately I have not observed any units involving measurement in my field work. What types of activ...

Hey Jess! Hope you're having a great week! Coordinate Grids Here is a list of the sites I explored: http://www.math.com/school/subject3/practice/S3U1L2/S3U1L2Pract.html This site works well, but I do not really see a need for its use in the classroom, as this activity could be done just as easily on paper. While the school I am in right now provides laptops for all of the students, not all schools do that, so this may be a good site to assign review homework on, but it isn't necessary. It is good practice at identifying coordinates, but there is nothing really added by using technology with this activity as the kids are just typing the letter they find. I would possibly use this in a class, but I would not say it is really necessary to complete these types of activities. http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/GeneralCoordinates/ This one was very similar to the one above, but it was an actual interactive game, so there was more use of the technological portion. ...

Hey Jess! I hope you had a great Easter weekend! Pentomino Activities The activities in this PowerPoint did not really cause me any frustration, I found them interesting and enjoyed them! It was a great review of symmetry and the different types of symmetry. I found a site titled Super Teacher Worksheets (superteacherworksheets.com) that offered a wide variety of activities, worksheets, and lessons for working with pentominoes and tessellation! Most of what I found was for an 8th grade curriculum, so it would not really apply to the 5th grade class I am teaching in, but some of it can be simplified to fit younger grades. For younger grades just starting out, I found a ton of worksheets and activities similar to the one below. The students have to play around with the shapes to make it fit into the animal or puzzle provided. This is a great and fun way to introduce these topics and I would definitely use this in my classroom! Would you use an activity like this? Does it seem like ...

Hey Jess! Hope you're having a great week! Nets Activity How could you use a similar activity with students in the classroom? Were you able to complete the activity without too much frustration? What are some anticipated issues while doing this activity with students? I personally thought this activity would be much more challenging than it turned out to be. Visualizing it at first seemed difficult, but when doing it, it came easier than I thought. I think this may be the same for students doing this activity. Some students can get easily discouraged and not want to try activities that seem too difficult. To be completely honest, when I first looked through it, it was something I really did not want to begin because it was so difficult for me to visualize, and I could see students reacting the same way. Also, some students visualize things and get very set on things happening one certain way. In order to do this activity, they would need to remain flexible in their mindset and...

Hey Jess! I hope you're having a great week. I really enjoyed this module, especially the case studies! They really opened my eyes to struggles that I never even realized students may face. Quick Images Video I did the activity along with the students, drawing what I saw, and I noticed that the ways they used to describe how they remembered them were similar to how I did. For example, with the first image, I thought of a crescent moon with a circle in the center. This is very similar to what the students said. However, some of the students thought of the most random things, like the letter C, a banana, or a jet ski. These are things that they can relate to in their own lives that they are reminded of when they see this image. Many others would have never connected this image with a jet ski. Some of the answers that followed these, though, were more geometrical in nature, like saying that it is a portion of a circle and that it has two points. You could tell if the students used ...

Hey Jess! I hope you had a great Spring Break! What are the key ideas of geometry that you want your students to work through during the school year?   While I did answer this question before completing the module, I feel a little biased because I just went through these standards while planning my lesson. I know that it is very important to teach graphing coordinate points, parallel and perpendicular lines, types of shapes and triangles, and using graphs to solve word problems. I think the number one thing people think of when they hear geometry is shapes. The standards I was looking over were 5th grade standards since that is the grade I am currently working with, so I understand that this will vary with each grade. In first grade, I think it will be more essential to teach the types of shapes and their properties, such as the difference between a circle and a sphere, which shapes have how many sides, etc. Van Hiele Levels and Polygon Properties One thing that was super he...