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Interior and Exterior Angles/ Teacher Manipulatives

Recently I was exposed to the concepts of interior and exterior angles. We learned to very beneficial formula of 180(n-2) for interior angles. In many education environments you take the formula and simply plug in the corresponding numbers. Instead, we took time to process that the  subtraction of 2 accounts for the two triangles that can't be formed in the process of triangulation, due to being adjacent sides to a vertex in a polygon. I believe triangulation is extremely beneficial to visual learners who need to visually process the amount of triangles; and thus interior angles, in a given polygon. The concept of interior and exterior angles amounting to a supplementary angle of 180 degrees is also greatly beneficial.

Through our recent geometry activities, we have been exposed to a great deal of helpful teaching manipulatives. We were exposed to one technology that enables teachers to guide a powerpoint presentation on students individual tablets. This innovative teaching I think would have tremendous benefit in a modern elementary environment because of how children cling to technology. I like the aspect that on the teacher mode setting you are easily able to identify a struggling student. I also liked the GeoGebra website. I think anytime you give children the leeway to miss with a application and learn through tinkering with mathematical concepts is a complete unconventional method that needs to be tapped into. For instance if you let children miss with the applications on a calculator they will eventually understand the applications as second nature and simply need formal instruction to apply it. I find young child almost inherently can operate applications. Applying this same logic to allow kids to learn math in a format that is exploratory, fun, and engaging could reap benefits on all cylinders.

Comments

  1. Hello,
    Ok I had to stop here because I read the 1st paragraph over and over again til I realized it must have been a typo. Reread sentence two. It was funny because I kept thinking it was the way I was reading it but I'm sure something is missing. I think you took to the meaning of blogging the same way as I did but not sure that is exactly what I was supposed to do. To be honest as I clicked around I found it very confusing, the post kept moving around, this is my second time writing a post because the first one disappeared on me, but the style of the layout gave me a feeling of stress. I'm so visual and want to see it all, I felt like too much disappeared or was not visible at all. The post themselves were great, just what I expected to see on a blog, I mean it is a blog right? Thanks for sharing!

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