As the final days of the semester drew near I was able to take what I learned from my geometry class and put it to the test in a sculpture classroom at the West Michigan Academy of Arts and Academics. I was excited to be part of an environment different to what I was used to, or at least I expected it to be different just by hearing the name of the school. Integrating art and academics in general seemed interesting to me, coming from someone who doesn't necessarily consider herself to be very art inclined. I still was eager to see what this school was all about while having a chance to teach a mini lesson on nets to a class of 7th and 8th grade students.
Arriving to the school, a bunch of emotions ran through me. I was anxious , nervous, excited and most of all ready. I felt prepared to do what it was I had come there to do, which was quite comforting. Our lesson really stemmed from the fact that we were in a sculpture class, having students build their own polyhedrons with provided "polytiles". This gave them a chance to work with shapes, maybe unfamiliar to themselves, and attempt to create a net or two dimensional representation of their own shape.
The students strolled in and immediately saw the tiles on their desks. A slew of excitement was apparent in the classroom, hearing students say, "Do we get to play with these today?". It was nice to see how eager the students were to get started before we had even told them what their task for the next hour would be. The announcements were over and it was time to begin with our lesson. We first had students explore with the polytiles to create their own polyhedrons. While this was going on I walked around the classroom, mostly answering questions about how to go about connecting the polytiles together. Once they got the hang of how to connect them, the building really got started. Observing the students work was a cool experience because I had a chance to see the advantage of being a part of an academy of arts.
There was one student, in particular, that thought outside of the box to create a polyhedron that looked different from everyone else's which was valuable to recognize because he ended up making the task at hand more challenging for himself without even knowing. This ended up being the case for a quite a few students. When students were asked to create a net for their polyhedrons one student immediately said, "So, would we just unfold what we made to get a net?". At that point I was both excited and bummed; excited because she understood exactly what was being asked of her and visually saw in her head what to do, but bummed because that idea was now planted into every students' mind instead of them coming up with different ways to create their nets. This reflected what we saw happening in the classroom. All of the students ended up unfolding their polyhedrons to lay flat on their tables and used that as a reference to draw their nets.
There were, however, differences when it came to the how. How they decided to draw their nets from that representation differed tremendously. Some students traced it exactly, with ridges and all, while other students used a straight edge or ruler to get straight lines. One student had an approach that really used geometric terminology well. She was using a ruler to measure the sides of the square base she had used to make her polyhedron and said that because she was working with squares and equilateral triangles that in order to all fit together evenly each side would have be the exact same length. So instead of tracing, she used her ruler and measured out 4 inches on each side of her square base and 4 triangular faces, creating a net for her pyramid. She also mentioned that the perpendicular bisector helped her to better draw a more precise net. She even included tabs on her net so that she could glue it together instead of tape it.
Arriving to the school, a bunch of emotions ran through me. I was anxious , nervous, excited and most of all ready. I felt prepared to do what it was I had come there to do, which was quite comforting. Our lesson really stemmed from the fact that we were in a sculpture class, having students build their own polyhedrons with provided "polytiles". This gave them a chance to work with shapes, maybe unfamiliar to themselves, and attempt to create a net or two dimensional representation of their own shape.
The students strolled in and immediately saw the tiles on their desks. A slew of excitement was apparent in the classroom, hearing students say, "Do we get to play with these today?". It was nice to see how eager the students were to get started before we had even told them what their task for the next hour would be. The announcements were over and it was time to begin with our lesson. We first had students explore with the polytiles to create their own polyhedrons. While this was going on I walked around the classroom, mostly answering questions about how to go about connecting the polytiles together. Once they got the hang of how to connect them, the building really got started. Observing the students work was a cool experience because I had a chance to see the advantage of being a part of an academy of arts.
There was one student, in particular, that thought outside of the box to create a polyhedron that looked different from everyone else's which was valuable to recognize because he ended up making the task at hand more challenging for himself without even knowing. This ended up being the case for a quite a few students. When students were asked to create a net for their polyhedrons one student immediately said, "So, would we just unfold what we made to get a net?". At that point I was both excited and bummed; excited because she understood exactly what was being asked of her and visually saw in her head what to do, but bummed because that idea was now planted into every students' mind instead of them coming up with different ways to create their nets. This reflected what we saw happening in the classroom. All of the students ended up unfolding their polyhedrons to lay flat on their tables and used that as a reference to draw their nets.
There were, however, differences when it came to the how. How they decided to draw their nets from that representation differed tremendously. Some students traced it exactly, with ridges and all, while other students used a straight edge or ruler to get straight lines. One student had an approach that really used geometric terminology well. She was using a ruler to measure the sides of the square base she had used to make her polyhedron and said that because she was working with squares and equilateral triangles that in order to all fit together evenly each side would have be the exact same length. So instead of tracing, she used her ruler and measured out 4 inches on each side of her square base and 4 triangular faces, creating a net for her pyramid. She also mentioned that the perpendicular bisector helped her to better draw a more precise net. She even included tabs on her net so that she could glue it together instead of tape it.