InTasc #8
The teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage learners to develop deep understanding of content areas and their connections, and to build skills to apply knowledge in meaningful ways.
Exploragons Exploration Activity
This lesson uses a physical manipulative to explore the properties of quadrilaterals. Students follow an activity with specific instructions on how to construct quadrilaterals and their diagonals. They then use their constructions to answer questions about quadrilaterals and classify them by their properties.
This artifact demonstrates understanding and using a variety of instructional strategies to encourage learners to develop deep understanding. The use of manipulatives is an example of the variety of instructional strategies that can be used in the math classroom to develop deep understanding. The use of the Exploragons makes the content more concrete for students because they can see and feel how the figures change when the different diagonals are added, changing the angles and the shape of the figures.
I really enjoy this lesson because I jump at any opportunity to use physical manipulatives in secondary math and because the students enjoyed it so much. The manipulatives make the learning feel like playing, and they were engaged and having in-depth discussions about the figures they were constructing and their properties. The concrete engagement with the math helps them later when we sort quadrilaterals by their properties because they can think back to their constructions.
5E Tech-Integrated Lesson - Triangle Inequality
This lesson has students use a Desmos tool to derive the triangle inequality. Students try different combinations of side lengths to see which can and cannot form a triangle and look for patterns for the ones that do work. They work in groups and then discuss as a class what the rule would be to determine if three sides can form a triangle.
This lesson demonstrates understanding and using a variety of instructional strategies to encourage learners to develop a deep understanding. The use of the Desmos tool as a tech-integration for an exploration activity shows another of the various instructional strategies that deepen understanding. Through this representation, students can see why some side lengths cannot form triangles and visualize what conditions need to be met for them to be able to.
This lesson to me shows meaningful use of technology in the math classroom by providing a representation of a property that is otherwise difficult to visualize. Students get to first try the set of lengths given to them in the exploration but can then try their own lengths as they continue to look for patterns. The flexible nature of the Desmos tool means they can try any combination of side lengths. This can help make certain takeaways clearer, for example, if the base is made 20 units long and each of the legs is only 1 unit, it becomes very clear that the two legs could never cross the length of the base and connect to form a triangle.
STEM 5E Lesson – Starting a Garden
This 5E lesson plan introducing graphing linear equations in context begins with an inquiry on the viability of growing food in a garden. Students are asked to determine the cost of growing a specific crop versus buying it from the store. Students determine the startup and operational costs of growing their crop and graph the function representing the cost to grow over time.
This lesson develops a deep understanding of content areas and their connections and builds skills to apply knowledge in meaningful ways. It develops a deep understanding of the science content by teaching about the process behind growing your own food, the math content by presenting it in context to make it more concrete, and it connects the two content areas. It then applies that knowledge in meaningful ways to real-world inquiries about the benefit and detractors of growing or purchasing your food.
This lesson is important because it shows one way math can be taught through interdisciplinary work. Math is used as a tool in this task to determine the viability of agricultural practices. This one an important way that we make math relevant while also using differentiation to make it accessible and cognitively demanding for all students.