Practicum

11. Naming and Sorting Polygons by Sides

        Today was the first day I have ever taught math in my life and it went considerable well. My goal was to get my students to start to have a better understanding of how to classify shapes by number of sides, angles within and types of sides and I think I did pretty well. My associate feedback was positive, I just have to slow down and make sure every student is on board with my lesson. During my lesson I used pipe cleaners, markers, dot paper and an overhead projector and encouraged students to come up to the board and help my classify shapes with whatever tools they wanted to use.

Reflection

·       I want to encourage students to show their thinking in pictures, numbers and words.

·       Math terminology can be tricky but I found quickly that it is important to repeat over and over again. Saying the correct terms will only help in the long run.

Reflection of Reflection

1.     Are students able to explain their reasoning for classifying figures?

2.     Are students realizing there are only 3 possibilities when you sort triangles by the number of equal sides?

3.     Do you students understand that polygons can be named by the number of sides and by the side length?

4.     Are students sorting polygons according to their side attributes?

5.     Can students classify geometric figures in different ways?

6.     Are students using appropriate mathematical terms to describe, compare and classify geometric figures?

7.     Can students differentiate a regular polygon from an irregular polygon?

These questions helped in the pursuit of the next lesson.

Nov 1^st/2011