Peter+Mancuso

Peter Unit Plan

Hello. My name is Peter Mancuso. I really look forward to being a secondary education math teacher. I want to reform mathematics in the classroom to where students become engaged with mathematics and excited about learning it. This semester I have begun to observe a math classroom setting at Walhalla High School.

Mr. Duey- Fractions official video - This video is a rap done by a teacher that describes how to convert improper fractions to mixed numbers and proper fractions into percentages. The content would be for a middle school or a high school math tech classroom. The video does have "catchy" verses that allows students to remember the concepts.

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 * __Realworldmath.org Lesson__**



This is a screen shot of my lesson.

Lesson name: Complex Area Problems

Lesson type: Based on the website, this is a Measurement type of lesson.

Grade level: The grade level for this lesson is 6-8th grade.

Math topic: This is a lesson that incorporates both math and social studies. This lesson is primarily used fro middle school students. The concepts involved in this lesson are area formulas, rates, measurement, proportion, and problem solving.

Instruction: I would say that the instructional strategies behind this lesson are primarily given through individual exploration. Students are supposed to use Google Earth to find the various areas of fields. From here, students are to use their answers from the area problems to figure out how much money can be made from a certain crop. For example, the problem might say that a farmer yields $5 from a square mile of corn. If the student has already figured out the area of the field, then he or she could calculate how much money the farmer would make. I believe that it would be important for the teacher to go over the various area formulas with the students before the Google Earth portion of the lesson began. This way the studnets would be familiar with the formulas that they would need. For the most part, the instructions and tools are already on the lesson in Google Earth. Therefore the students are doing individual work, but they have some help built into the program. I also feel like the teacher should walk around to the various work stations to make sure the studetns are on track and understanding the problem.

Lesson Strengths: I feel like this is a great lesson. Students are applying their knowledge of area and rates to a real world problem. Students can see through google earth that they are taking the area of an actual farm. Students can now see that mathematics has a purpose outside of the classroom. Also the integration of technology into the lesson is vital for a student's education.

Lesson Weaknesses: I do not honestly see too many weaknesses in this lesson. I would suggest having some type of assessment to come after the lesson, to see if the students truly understand the concepts.

This would be appropriate for a future math class. I honestly really like this lesson. I believe students can be interactive and learn the material at the same time. This is the ultimate goal of education, and I believe this lesson completes that goal.

I would suggest that the teacher make the farms closer to home. Students would connect more with the material if they were calculating areas closer to home.

The following is my paper for 426. In this paper is a discussion on the technology that I plan on using.

__**Sketchup Reflection**__

I believe that Sketchup is a great program to use in the classroom. I think that it provides a great opportunity for students to view and create 3-D pictures. There is so much that can be done with this program. A multitude of shapes and tools can be used to create a variety of objects in Sketchup. A student can measure lengths to find areas and volumes. I believe that this program would work the best in a geometry classroom. I believe the 3-D aspect of the program really helps students understand shapes and the properties of those shapes. The problem that I created is revolved around an office building that I built in Sketchup. This program provided me the chance to create a lesson. I believe that I could create a lot of these lessons with the basis being Sketchup.

Attached is the problem.