SEDC723-Dr.

Gardella
Suzana Jung
Midterm-Fall2015
1a) Explain the role that a Laboratory Activity plays in learning new material in a Geometry or
Trigonometry course.
A Geometry course should be a lab course because it is visual, not literal, like in the past. For
example, asking students what a parallelogram is. However, teachers should note that when
doing area lessons, we should develop Visual Proof by using a parallelogram and the Euclidean
Rotation after cutting the altitude in half. In addition, students must understand geometry first in
order to be logical.
Order of teaching geometry should be as follows:
1. Lab: A teacher can take more time in teaching (ex. how to use a protractor), and a lab needs to
be more efficient when teaching a Geometry course (ex. indicate angle 1, angle 2, and angle 3,
instead of angle ABC, angle ACB, and angle BAC).
2. Discussion: Discussion in groups is effective (teachers should walk around and assess each
group to see whether students are following directions and doing the work correctly while
answering questions and guiding their learning).
3. Written Explanation: This is where teachers involve students and start giving written
explanation such as PowerPoint presentation and notes on the board.
4. Prove: Two column proofs (does not need to be two columns) is an outline of thinking
-Showing proofs too early to students can cause no mechanism (understanding).
-Students do not use two column proofs anymore after their Regents (prove is not really
essential for students further education).

In addition, a Laboratory Activity should be like Do Now, but written in Lab form instead. The
lab should be given as soon as students walk in the classroom because students will remember
almost any information coming forth at prime-time-1, and it is not the time to be searching for
what students may know about something (Sousa, p.95). One of the reasons why a Laboratory
Activity is effective is because it relates to the new lesson information when the students tend to
focus the most and this is essential for students learning.
Another reason why a Laboratory Activity is effective is because it creates episodic memory, like
how we do not forget our Median Laboratory on the first day of the Methods I class.
A Laboratory Activity should be crystal clear with direct instructions because students will not
have the entire class time only on the lab activity. In addition, a Laboratory Activity should be
about ten minutes long because todays students are accustomed to quick change and novelty in
their environment, many find it difficult to concentrate on the same topic for long periods of
time (Sousa, p.97).
A Laboratory Activity generates discussion and guides students to come up with the conclusion,
and then guides them to the lesson. When this purpose fails for most of students in class, this
means that the Laboratory Activity instruction was not efficient enough for students learning and
students can easily intake the wrong information. Therefore, a Laboratory Activity can be
effective for both students and teachers when they are clear, short, and done in the beginning of
the class for the new lesson.

1 b) Your goal is to have students learn the Exterior Angle Theorem. Construct a Laboratory
Activity (1 page) to introduce the ideas involved.
Grade(s): High School/Commencement Level Grade 10
CCLS Math: G.CO.9
Goal: Introduce the Exterior Angle Theorem by extending one of the sides of the triangle.
Materials: Protractor and worksheets.
Have the class break into groups of 2-4.
ABC High School-Ms. Jung
Name:

Mathematics-Geometry
Class: Period 1, 2, and 3
Geometry Lab 20
What is Exterior Angle of a Triangle?

1. Use the protractor and measure each of the angles:

1=

2=

3=

4=

2. What statement can you make about the sum of the interior angles of a triangle and the
sum of the straight line?

3. What is the sum of

i. 1+2+3 =
ii.

3+4 =

4. Subtract the above ii from i? (ex. i - ii)

5. What statement can you make about the measures of the 4 and the sum of the two
interior opposite angles (1+2)?

2)

Explain why a strictly logical approach to new material through a PowerPoint presentation

may not allow students to learn the concepts/skills involved.

Students learning will be passive learning when students are given a strictly logical approach to
new material through a PowerPoint presentation (PPT) which may not allow students to learn the
concepts/skills involved. Most often students will not know what they are copying down
because of no prior knowledge to connect to the new lesson. In addition, students will most
likely not even look back at their notes to review. However, I believe that a PPT is essential after
doing a laboratory activities and discussions of the new topic. For example if I want to introduce
a Geometry course to students as their new topic, then I should teach in the following order:
1. Lab: A teacher can take more time in teaching (ex. how to use a protractor), and a lab needs to
be more efficient when teaching a Geometry course (ex. indicate angle 1, angle 2, and angle 3,
instead of angle ABC, angle ACB, and angle BAC).
2. Discussion: Discussion in groups is effective (teachers should walk around and assess each
group to see whether students are following directions and doing the work correctly while
answering questions and guiding their learning).
3. Written Explanation: This is where teachers involve students and start giving written
explanation such as PowerPoint presentation and notes on the board.
4. Prove: Two column proofs (does not need to be two columns) is an outline of thinking
-Showing proofs too early to students can cause no mechanism (understanding).
-Students do not use two column proofs anymore after their Regents (prove is not really
essential for students further education).
A laboratory activity and discussion are active processes. According to Ben-Hur, the general
view among philosophers, cognitive psychologists, and educators is that humans develop

concepts through an active process of adaptation to new and different experiences not through
mathematical terms that students have never developed actively (Ben-Hur, p. 10). The
PowerPoint presentation is one of the tools of classroom communication that is essential in
which students understand the slides well by connecting their prior knowledge such as laboratory
activities. However, often this critical communication fails when teachers tend to jump into the
lesson without scaffolding or teaching the fundamental concepts of math and forcing students to
memorize, such as formulas. For example, I had to memorize the formula of the standard
deviation when I was taking a Statistics course and could not recall it during my content exam.
However, when Dr. Gardella taught the standard deviation formula to us episodically, it made
more sense and became unforgettable. Therefore, while maintaining students attention and
active involvement, teachers must ensure that the communication does not depend on
mathematical terms that are not well known to all students or may not be used correctly (BenHur, p.66).

Also, the diagram from National Training Laboratories above shows that the least effective
teaching method is lecturing. Therefore, the PowerPoint presentation will be meaningless and
wasteful on its own for a strictly logical approach to new material to allow students to learn the
concepts/skills involved.
3) Find a problem in a textbook in Geometry, Trigonometry or Statistics that you think can be
rewritten to have a more positive semantic structure.

(a)

Copy the problem on your test submission paper.

Find the values of all six trigonometric functions of 45 .

(b)

Record how you would rewrite the problem to make it more understandable to a student.

Find the values of the following six trigonometric functions of 45 .

sin 45 =

cos 45=

tan 45 =

csc 45 =

sec 45 =

cot 45 =

(c)

Explain how your rewrite makes the problem more understandable.

My rewrite of the problem makes it more understandable to students because I listed all six
trigonometric functions to help students recall them, which helps them answer the question. As
Dr. Gardella mentioned in the Methods II class, teachers should not let students get blocked from
their learning because of not having basic knowledge of math. For example, a student might not
be able to learn linear function such as 91x+234 = y because he/she cannot complete the t-chart
because he/she might not know the multiplication table. If the lesson is based on another
purpose other than simple calculations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division,
then teachers should allow students to use calculators for advanced math like the above example.
This implies that since the purpose of the problem of the trigonometric question that is above is
not to test memorization of recalling all six trigonometric functions, then the question should
provide the list of six. This way, teachers can assess whether students know how to find the
values of trigonometric functions of certain angles or not.

I would also revise the given picture of a square that is cut into two pieces diagonally because the
white part of the triangle is unnecessary information to find the values of trigonometric functions
of a triangle. As we went over in our Methods II class, unnecessary information can overwhelm
students, and students can easily get lost. Especially in a course like trigonometry where many
of students can easily get lost, questions should have a clear positive semantic structure. Math
word problem is one of the types of questions that many students get confused from. Ben-Hur
indicates that successful word problems solvers first identify the semantic structure as they read
the text and then comprehend the entire semantic set relations on the basis of past experiences if
they are written using a clear semantic structure (Ben-Hur, p.89). Therefore, it is essential for

students learning that textbook questions are written in ways students can easily identify the
semantic structure and study independently.

4) Explain how you would teach the relationship between the graphs of the following
functions:
In early October, you addressed the idea of: f(x) = x2 leading to g(x) = (x+2)2
Now in November, you want to address: h(x) = sin x leading to t(x) = sin (x + /2)
How would you go about using the quadratic to address the sine function?
I would first give out a laboratory activity worksheet where students will complete the t-chart of
h(x) = sin x and graph it accordingly in green. Then I would allow students to do the same thing
for t(x) = sin (x + /2), but on the same graph paper in red and label it as t(x) = sin (x + /2).
(Student entries are in green and red)

h(x) =
sin ( x)

t(x) =

sin ( x+ )
2
0

2
0

After the graph, I would show the October laboratory activities of f(x) = x2 leading to g(x) =
(x+2)2 either under an Elmo Protractor or on the SMART Board screen and ask students what
assumption they can make about the graphs of h(x) to t(x) and f(x) to g(x). When students
answer it as a shift of the graph then I will not continue the lesson with other trigonometric
functions such as cosine because it will be overwhelming for students. In addition, I did only
half of the period (0 to pi), not a full period (0 to 2pi) because it is easier, simpler, and clearer to
visualize than the full graph.
Through the past laboratory activity, we know that the graph of g(x) = (x+2)2 shifts two units to
the left from the graph of f(x) = x2, the original graph, by completing a t-chart and graphing it
accordingly. In addition, we can tell that there is no change in y-axis (the graph is not either
shifting up or down from the original graph). Therefore, algebraically, we know that

f ( x )=x 2 ( 0,0 )
No change in y-axis means (x, 0) and we need to solve for x-value.
since g ( x )= y , we can say that 0= ( x +2 )2 , then x= -2. Therefore, we shifted the graph of g(x)
from the graph of f(x) when a positive constant is added to x-value then squared. Similarly, we
should shift pi/2 units to the left from the graph h(x) = sin x to t(x) = sin (x + /2) because of the
same reason.