6th Grade Math Geometry Unit (Area)
Lisa Klein, Teacher
Lisa Klein is a 6th – 8th grade math teacher. This article is about her capstone project which she developed for the 6th grade Geometry unit. Her lesson was focused on the area of rectangle, parallelogram, triangle, and trapezoid. It reflects the author’s teaching style in face-to-face and online mode. Several tech tools were used to design this class. This unit was spread over five weeks and was designed in a google classroom.
At the beginning of this project the author mentioned that students need to memorize how to find areas of different shapes. She designed a unit for her 6th grade students by adding engaging activities to enhance students’ understanding about how to calculate the area of different shapes. In this unit she used one shape and extended it by adding another shape.
While designing this unit the author mentioned that during the previous year, students had Wednesday as a flex day. And those days were turned into office hours as students were not engaged with the meaningful school activities. Virtual students were not bound with classroom activities and assignments. For that reason, the author added a few tech tools to enhance the social presence between her students and to help increase their participation. She tried to build a classroom community with Google which she believed helped to create social presence.
Author thinks that her project is based on the triple E framework. Both formative and summative assessment techniques were used. For the assessments she used several tech tools such as Kahoot, ALEKS. It gave an opportunity to students to learn outside of their typical school day by creating the bridge between the classroom learning and day to day life experience. The use of guided notes and EdPuzzle made it easier for students to understand the concept and demonstrate their understanding of the concepts. To engage students and help them stay focused on their lessons, the author used the gamification concept. She added Kahoot and Quiziz to motivate students which helped students to engage as active learners.
In this project author has used several ed tech tools to build interactive lesson plans.