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cylinder sphere tasks volume

Finding a Radius

I designed a class around the pedagogy of Project Based Learning this semester. As the school year passes by at mach speed, I have adapted certain activities and projects to fit my students’ needs. The result is a class based around providing tools, and tackling interesting tasks with them. Each set of problems (or unit) is capped with a large project.

We are in the midst of a surface area and volume unit. We have tackled the major solids and prisms. Netting, superimposing grids, converting units, analyzing packaging etc. Throughout the entire class, I have been highlighting the various “employable skills” that they are honing with their work. Estimation, problem solving, critical thinking, diagnostics, peer work, spatial reasoning and the like.

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infinity surface area tasks volume

Lesson Planning; Lesson Participating

Occasionally, I give a task to my students before I have done it myself. Sometimes it is because the solution is fairly straightforward and I can see multiple ways to arriving at it without actually doing it. Other times it is because I want to have no impact on my students’ thought pathways. The practice also makes class time more exciting as students reason through methods that I would not have though of–I am trying to move from a monotonous state of lesson planning to a more exciting one of lesson participation.