Week 11 - Grade 9

This week in class we had two lessons geared towards a grade 9 classroom; one for academic and one for applied. Even though they were two different lessons for two different streams, they both used visual aids to make the math more concrete. I really liked the visual representation of the math concept for the academic class; representing the pattern between polygons and the sum of the interior angles. Starting the lesson off, we were instructed to divide the polygons into triangles, where each line had to start from the same point. Using previous knowledge the students can then tell us the sum of the interior angles by adding up the sum of all the angles of each triangle in the polygon.

 

 

I didn't know this relationship between the number of triangles that fit into the polygons and the sum of the interior angles of regular polygons before this class and the lesson made this relationship apparent. I was able to see, first hand, how the use of visual representations can make math concepts easier to understand as well as more memorable later on and I am now even more intent on creating opportunities while teaching for visual representations for every stream.