Week 8 Reflection- Geome-whaaaatt?

Retrieved November 7th 2016 from: Crafthubs

This week, our topic of conversation was geometry...what is the first thing you think of when you hear "geometry"? I think of triangles...however this unit is much more complicated than simply identifying triangles. It concerns the properties and relations of points, lines, surfaces, solids and higher dimensional analogs...what the heck does that mean right?

It has been difficult for me up to this point to really try and see anything in action, however this week during my observation day in my placement class, I had the opportunity to see the nitty gritty of a geometry lesson. The students were working on measuring angles, at the start of the lesson, my associate teachers asked the students "why are the angles on the 3rd page surrounded by a circle?" It was very beneficial for me to experience this because nearly every student in the class had a different answer, ranging from:
- Because the teacher wants to tell us the whole angle
- You can put the arrow anywhere you wish to create an angle
- Because a circle is a full 360 degrees and no matter what angle we put into the circle, it will measure somewhere in between 0 and 360.

I found this absolutely incredible, those were only some of the examples and each student that answered this question was able to reasonably justify their answer. Some of the questions that the teacher asked were simply used as a refresher tool for things they had learned the previous day, such as "what do we use to measure an angle?" (a protractor in case anyone forgets...) and "what types of angles are there?" (acute, obtuse, right and straight).

Being a part of this lesson really helped me overcome some of the fears I thought I would have going into a math lesson, many of the students were coming to me with questions and I found myself readily helping them without much hesitation and I enjoyed being able to help them finally understand how to measure and create angles. One thing I found interesting was that when the students were presented with minimal instructions to create an angle, they struggled with it; many of them wanted step by step instructions to facilitate the task. I would be interested to see how we could try and make students feel more confident in their abilities to complete the tasks on their own.

Retrieved November 9th 2016 from Dreambox

One other thing I wanted to talk about was the website the students were using during part of their math period. This website is called Dreambox, and it is used to help students build conception understanding and fluency. I personally am a strong believer of the saying "practice makes perfect" so when I saw how engaged the students were while using Dreambox it amazed me. It gave me so much hope for this younger generation that they can still find it in them to put forth their best effort if provided with the appropriate tools for today's day and age because if education is something that is always evolving, so should the way we teach. 

Would we want to have been taught the way we are teaching? Or would we want our children to be taught that way? That is one question I will ask myself regularly as I work my way into the profession and I think that more educators should consider these types of questions...just a little food for thought! 

Retrieved November 9th 2016 via GIPHY