Ella+Kate+Williams

Unit Plan Link

My name is Ella Kate Williams and I am very excited about spending the rest of my professional career in high school! High school was one of my favorite time is school and throughout those four years my love for math grew and grew. I love working with kids, helping them learn, and sharing my love of math with them. I have learned very quickly that math is not what I thought it was...it's much more challenging and enjoyable!

"Introduction to Right Angles" media type="custom" key="4310885" align="center"

This video is a great way for students to picture right angles in their everyday world!


 * SketchUp with Google Earth**



This is a Project-Based Learning type lesson. This would be great to use in Geometry or Trigonometry classroom! It would also be great when discussing measurement and scale. The idea behind this project is for students to create their own buildings. Two ways in which students can approach this activity is by re-creating an existing building, or two creating their own original building then placing it into Google Earth. Because it is a project-based lesson it would probably be best for students to work in pairs or small groups to create their buildings. If the students are divided into groups/pairs they could be given the task of creating a city of buildings! Due to the project nature of this lesson and time constraints it may be best to introduce the SketchUp program during class, have the students become familiar with using the software, then turn them loose to create their own buildings/towns on their own. It would be great to have the students work together outside of class on this project, carrying on their mathematical thinking outside of class. This also is a great way for students that learn in a more visual manner to explore scaling and measurements.


 * Sketchup Math Problem**




 * Sketchup Reflection**

Though Google Sketchup takes a bit of time to get used to using it could potentially be very useful in giving students 3-D models to look at. For my problem I built a garage for students to calculate the surface area, and this graphic may make it much easier for the students to visualize and be able to identify how many sides they need to account for when making their calculations. I'm sure there are many different ways in which Sketchup could be applied and used in the mathematics classroom however, the main issue will most likely be that the user must be proficient in opperating the program which will take time to acquire such proficiency.