My Journey through Education

Nets Activity  I would do a similar activity in my class by having them guess before starting how many and which ones could be folded into a box without the lid. After taking a vote we would test it out as a class. I think by doing it as a class it would be easier for students because they could talk it out with each other.   I thought the activity was pretty simple I knew from the start that the one with 5 in a straight line wouldnt work and same with the one that had 2 blocks touching 2 blocks so that meant I only needed to come up with 2 more that wouldnt work. I had a little trouble with the other 2 that didn't work and need to fold them to make sure I was right. Some problems I think students would have it possibly ripping the pieces or not folding the blocks on the lines so it might not look like a block without a lid.  What grade level do you think an activity like this would best work for? Or could this be something used by all grade levels? Tex...

Quick Images Video In this video the first image the teacher shows the students is one that to be I would describe as a moon with a small circle in the middle of it. After showing the students the shape 2 types and allowing them time to draw the shape they talk about it as a class. One thing the teacher says is she asked the students is the shape reminds them of anything. This is a good way to remember things because you are comparing it to an actual item. One student says what I stated in the beginning that is looks like a moon. Another student compares the shape to the letter C. Other students name things that is reminds them of, this shows that there isn't just 1 correct answer for questions like this.  Did you think of anything else that is looks like that the students didn't say? Shapes and Geometric Definitions My definitions for these geometric terms come from many years ago in elementary school or maybe even before that in preschool. I just always remember that...

Key Ideas in Geometry What are the key ideas of geometry that you want your students to work through during the school year? The key ideas of geometry I want my students to work through during the school is to better understand shapes and their attributes.Having my students be able to name different shapes just by knowing their sides or angles is a huge start. In my field experience class they just started working on this and some kids are having trouble, I never thought as just being able to name different shapes would be that hard for students but this has now proved me wrong. I feel as those for the other key ideas that I would want my students to learn would have to depend on what grade I end up teaching. Are there key ideas that you think are more important than others? Van Hiele Levels and Polygon Properties I think that the power point was very informative. I never thought about students being at different levels to understand a concept. I just thought about d...

Textbook Reading What are the advantages of having students conduct experiments even before they attempt to figure out a theoretical probability? The advantages of having students conduct experiments before they attempt to figure out theoretical probability is they are able to make their own predictions. They then use their predictions to try and make connections about what might happen. Go to the Illuminations website and explore one of the virtual experiments. List the title and describe the experiment that you explored and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of virtual experiments. (http://illuminations.nctm.org/ and use the search site: probability and check interactives)  The title of the virtual experiment I explored was Adjustable Spinner. The virtual spinner was actually really cool. It allowed you to pick how big you wanted each part of the spinner. You got to choose how many times you spun the spinner. Each time you spun the spinner it changed both th...

Box Plots I would want to teach a lesson to Class B because most of the class seems to understand the topic. There are just a few students who don't understand the topic well. I feel like you couldnt just teach a follow-up lesson to Class A, with class A you need to really reteach pretty much the whole lesson because it seems like none of the class really understood anything that was taught. I mean the highest test score was a 60% which is pretty low and a D in most schools.  Do you think it would be easier to teach Class A or Class B? Why? Three Questions to ask students: 1. Which class on average do you think collected more trash? - I think the US class collected more data based on looking at the two box plots. This is because the average amount from the German class was a little  over 50 lbs and the average for the US class was about 80 lbs. 2. How does the amount of students in each class effect the data? - I don't think that the amount of students has tha...

Generating Meaning This article addresses how students need to understand the real meaning of range, mean, median, and mode before they are really able to understand how to find the average. It talks about how students need to understand the concept of how to find the average and not just know the procedure. The article then goes on to explain how they need to look, determine, develop, recognize, and understand  to fully get how to understand the average. The article then goes to talk about different activities to do with the students to get them to be able to really understand the concept. I really don't remember that much about my elementary school math but I do remember that when my teacher would talk about mean she would just talk about how it was the average amount of a data set. I remember the teacher asking us questions like "how many siblings do you have?" or "how many pets do you have?" and then using that data we needed to calculate what the mean or...

Lost Teeth Video Many people don't usually lose a lot of teeth before the age of 5 (kindergarten) most of the time but the older they get the more teeth they have probably lost. They are realizing this so the teacher wants her students to make predictions on what they think their data will tell them about each grade.  Do you remember losing your first tooth?  The insight I get about the children's thinking about why the ranges would be different is the students thought that the range would be lower in the lower grades but the higher grades actually had the lower range of number of teeth lost. This is because some peoples teeth like to stay longer than others but once they get to a certain age they will have lost multiple teeth because we need to grow our adult teeth.  I think it is important that the students are able to state the highest and lowest numbers in their data. I also think its important that they are taking into account the students who don't kn...