Blog on Videos

A.)  What does the student know?

Video 1:  what shapes look like…she can draw them with her fingers

Video 2:  the student realized in the end that triangles turned upside down and sideways are still triangles but it took him some time figuring this out

Video 3:  knows how many sides the obtuse triangle has

Video 4:  knows basic definitions of congruent and similar

Video 5:  knows about angles and degrees, about how to measure angles

Video 6:  this was an interesting video, I think he realizes that he is working with 3-D shapes; he knew the name of the cube

Video 7:  knows how to make shapes and letters out of triangles

 B.)  What does the student not know?

Video 1:  how to explain what shapes are…she can’t describe the shape to the teacher

Video 2:  doesn’t know how to explain/describe what makes a triangle a triangle

Video 3:  doesn’t know that an obtuse triangle is a triangle; doesn’t know the characteristics of a triangle

Video 4:  doesn’t understand that shapes can still be similar if they are the same size, doesn’t really grasp what makes things similar

Video 5:  needs to learn more about the sizes of angles and degrees and hoe to measure it correctly

Video 6:  he didn’t realize that he was looking at rectangular prisms, triangular prisms and so on..he couldn’t indentify all of the shapes

Video 7:  doesn’t know how to sort triangles by different sizes, etc..

 C.)  Ideas for teaching…

Video 1:  Go over definitions of shapes, talk about what makes a triangle a triangle and a square a square and so on…

Video 2: same thing, I would go over what makes a shape a shape, with more practice and discussion this student could understand

Video 3:  discuss characteristics of triangles and show many different kinds and sizes of various triangle

Video 4:  show a bunch of congruent and similar shapes and discuss them and go over why they are either similar or congruent

Video 5:  Use the manipualatives from the video and practice measuring angles together

Video 6:  discuss what makes something 3-D versus 2-D and what makes a rectangular prism different from a rectangle, discuss faces/sides of the shapes

Video 7:  go over different types of triangles and sorting techniques

 

Symmetry Lesson

 My cooperating teacher was out for a couple of days so I got to substitute for the class.  I got to teach a really neat lesson on symmetry from the Investigations book. 

First, I put a transparency of a symmetrical shape on the overhead projector and had students tell me what they noticed about the shape.  A lot of kids were able to see that the shape was the same on both sides.  Some also commented on how if you folded the shape in half how the two sides would match up.  This was a good segue into discussing the definitions of symmetry, reflection and mirror symmetry and so forth…

 Then, I let each student pick two of the same pattern blocks (they could choose anything but the yellow hexagons).  I then gave them each a mirror and a piece of copy paper.  I had them draw a line down the middle of their paper and place one shape up against the line.  Then they held the mirror up against the shape and saw the reflection.  They commented on how it was the same on both sides or symmetrical.  Then they placed the other remaining pattern block up against the shape and saw that it looked the same as the reflection did in the mirror.  They traced over their shapes to show that each side is symmetrical. 

I think that was a fun lesson to introduce symmetry.  The students seemed to really enjoy it and all of them seemed to understand symmetry and be able to draw   symmetrical shapes once the lesson was finished.  I had a good time teaching for the couple of days that my cooperating teacher was out.  It made me realize how much I am going to enjoy having my own class one day!