April's Portfolio Blog

First Day

Education is not black and white. Of course, there are standards and accountability, but education goes far beyond those tests and results. Instructors cannot simply lecture and expect students to absorb and understand the information being handed to them, they must interact and motivate students to do more.

Instructors should be experts in their fields and have the ability to get the necessary information across, but also should be able to relate on some level to their students. Education is definitely two-sided in that both the student and instructor learn something each and every day. Instructors are not there to control students and students cannot control the instructor and instruction. There must be a collaborative effort between the two in order to foster a healthy and successful learning environment.

Each day presents a new opportunity to learn. As long as the instructor connects with the students and motivates them to complete the coursework and to perform above and beyond the requirements, then the students will not have any problems achieving success. However, this would be a perfect scenario. An instructor must plan for the unexpected and the undesirable behaviors of the students. An appropriate classroom management plan as well as a differentiated lesson plan both assist in maintaining a productive flow to the day-to-day routine and accounts for interruptions to that routine.

The role of the educator is not only to impart information and knowledge on to the students, but also to allow them to grow and cultivate their own personalities and opinions. It is important as an educator to maintain a neutral stance on controversial views and allowing for open debate in the classroom.

There are a lot of factors that go into being a successful educator. Instructors should inspire, motivate and ultimately encourage students to learn, while managing a classroom and leading the students to perform to their highest potential.

concentric circles

Assessment: :
Formative:
By using the video, the instructor can determine how well the students are grasping the concept of concentric circles. The instructor can stop and replay the video if the students seem to be falling behind and in contrast, the instructor can only play the video once if the students seem to understand. Also, during group work, the instructor will move around the room asking questions to the different groups of students working together, ensuring they are covering the necessary material.
Summative:
The material will be covered on a test as well as a project that is to be determined, but will involve geometric proofs.

field trip lesson plan

The student/teacher work books for the field trip day can be found here.

The SOL that will be focused on during this lesson is:

G.5:    The student will a)    investigate and identify congruence and similarity relationships between triangles;
and b)    prove two triangles are congruent or similar, given information in the form of a figure or statement, using algebraic and coordinate as well as deductive proofs.

The lesson will be 90 minutes and will focus mainly on the congruency of triangles.

Cognitive Objectives: Students will analyze triangles to determine whether they are congruent or similar. Students will understand the differences between those two concepts and will be able to prove two triangles are either congruent or similar using algebraic, coordinate and deductive proofs.

Materials/Technology and Advanced preparation: Students will have copies of the textbook as well as handouts for the beginning of class. PowerPoint will also be used.

Teaching and Learning Sequence:

Introduction/Anticipatory set: Instructor will begin class with a handout, asking students to use the knowledge they already have about triangles to try to determine whether they are “alike” or not. Instructor will use PowerPoint to move discussion along, which aids in differentiating the terms similar and congruent. For example, Bert and Ernie are similar because they are both puppets, but they are not congruent or “identical”, unlike the twins in the next slide.

Lesson Development:

Instructor will go over key concepts of theorems needed to form deductive proofs and also give examples of algebraic and coordinate proofs of triangle congruency and similarity. Instructor will create some tension in the classroom by frequently asking for student’s input and answers to questions asked.

Closure:

Students will be given a set of problems to do for homework out of the textbook. For extra credit, they are to come up with their own problem and write the steps that they would use to solve it if they were the teacher.

Homework: Problems in the text, which will be different for each class, and create your own problem for extra credit

Assessment:

Formative- Instructor will ask questions to gauge understanding of the topic and persuade class participation. Instructor will motivate students by using positive feedback for correct answers or good effort. Also the instructor will move around the room during the students’ group work and assist in answering any questions they have.

Summative- Instructor will go over any questions students had on the homework in the next class, then collecting it and assigning grades based on accuracy and effort put forth on a problem. For example, if a student did not get the correct answer, but clearly spent a great deal of time working a problem, the student will receive some credit for their effort. Also, extra credit will be assigned to students who created their own problem and handed it in on time during the next class.

References: textbook

Appended materials: start of class worksheet

The SOL I chose to focus on an Algebra II/Trigonometry standard:

AII/T.29 The student will identify, create, and solve practical problems involving triangles. Techniques will include using the trigonometric functions, the Pythagorean Theorem, the Law of Sines, and the Law of Cosines

Immediately I thought of roller coasters. Easily any triangle problem could be applied to roller coasters, calculating angles or lengths of the sides of triangles using all of the formulas mentioned. I found this video of The Intimidator at Kings Dominion because it relates to VA as well as the subject at hand.

I would probably only show the first 30 seconds, for the first drop and then cut it off and ask what we could do with this.

This video could also be used in a Calculus class when going over velocity and speed and differentiating equations.

Are boring. Usually. These articles, blogs, presentations, etc. are meant to make us question the current “prototype”for PowerPoints and see how they can evolve into something interactive and engaging for students. Garr Reynolds sums it up well when discussing Dr. John Medina and his approaches to presentation. The phrases “vision is the dominant sense” and “people don’t pay attention to boring things” really resonated with me (presentationzen.com). The problems in the first version of the mentoring slide in the “Slide Makeover” post have to do with the visual presentation of it. There are too many words crowding the first presentation and absolutely nothing that draws the reader/student in (except maybe the word “break” which would certainly be necessary…). The improved version of the mentoring presentation is impressive. It doesn’t contain too many unnecessary words and it promotes interaction. Mr. Meyers also brings in the ideas of color, size, indentation, and other visual tools and how they assist in making successful PowerPoint presentations.

The Goldilocks rule in Newitz’s post relates to Reynolds rule of not paying attention to boring things. It is important to add only CRUCIAL information to a PowerPoint presentation. If you give too much, students will get bored and stop paying attention. If you give too little, students may not understand what the point is or be able to take any notes on the subject. So we, as educators, need to determine the right amount of information, which also ties into the Rule of Fours in Newitz’s post. She claims that any given person can only take in four separate pieces of information at a time, which limits how much information should be put on the slides.

Personally, something important I found in Dr. Medina’s presentation and in Mr. Meyer’s as well is humor. Using humor in any sort of presentation can help engage the students. The photos and clip art in Dr. Medina’s presentation would definitely elicit some chuckles and the fruit graph in Mr. Meyers would invite a funny discussion while being informative! (I like the fruit graph and I’d like to use it. )

All of this information is going to prove to be very useful, especially for the first year teacher.

I actually had already subscribed to some sites on GoogleReader and I was following people who I didn’t know I was following….

These are some of the “professional” blogs I subscribed to:

dy/dan: Mr. Myers, a math teacher, made this blog and it’s actually pretty cool. He likes to look at what students “tweet” a lot, which is an interesting way to interact with them. He also posts math problems and asks for answers on his blog.

Wolfram MathWorld: We looked at WolframAlpha the other day in class, but this is basically solely for mathematics and a great resource on the web.

Math Factor Podcast: I’m not entirely sure what “podcast” means in this sense, but this blog from the University of Arkansas provides a good amount of math questions and gives DETAILED calculations and results.

MathNotations: This is a cool blog because he posts questions and answers to different problems on Twitter.

Let’s Play Math: This is one I’m not too interested in, but it has a few homeschooling references if any parents wanted to do something at home with their children.

Now, these are some personal blogs I subscribe to (and I hope you will too!)

The Pioneer Woman: Ree Drummond is an awesome woman with some awesome stories and GREAT recipes. She even won “Throwdown with Bobby Flay”!

The Amused Bouche: Another shameless plug. This time it’s my college roommate blogging about her adventures in culinary school! It’s really interesting and she usually adds some recipes or pictures of famous chefs. This is probably my favorite.

NY Times: This is pretty self explanatory. I couldn’t figure out how to subscribe to it on GoogleReader, but this is one of the only “newspapers” I’ve ever read.