Josh+Strickland

Unit Plan Link

I am a senior secondary education: mathematics major at Clemson University. I plan to be a teacher soon, and I would also like to coach one day. I currently live in Woodruff, SC. I enjoy playing and watching sports during my free time. media type="custom" key="4310917" Grip Geometery


 * __Lesson Review__:**

Complex Area Problem Measurement Problem Grades: 6-10 Mathematics (area) and Social Studies

Lesson Description This lesson consists of two parts. The first requires students to find the area of a complex shape using formulas and the Google Earth ruler tool. The objects chosen for this lesson are several crop fields in Minnesota. The shapes chosen require the area formulas for a parallelogram and triangle. Remind students that complex area can be found by the addition of parts or by subtracting from a greater whole.

The second part of the problem is revealed when students click on the house icon. This section consists of a problem or several problems that a farmer may want to solve, such as “how much money will my crop yield?” Students will need to be able to solve rate problems with a proportion for this section.

Both problem sections ask that student show their work in steps on paper. Calculator use is encouraged. There are three crop fields in this file, but you could add more of a different variety. Students can even create their own problems to share with the class.

Personally, I think this is a great way for teachers to teach students how to find area of complex shapes. This is great because%Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Cache-Control: max-age=0 students get a real life situation of complex areas, and not just a sheet of paper with shapes all over it. This way, it can also be interactive and students can begin exploring Google Earth and find other areas to calculate. After the students find the area of a particular mapping, then the teacher can come up with other problems dealing with the mapping, for example, "how much money will my crop yield per square mile?" The students can also work together to find other areas of other mappings. This would also be a very good technique when teaching geometry.

To view the entire lesson, go to []

I think google sketchup is a very useful resource for teaching mathematics. you can represent problems in different ways for students to understand and see in multiple perspectives. it is very useful in geometry because of all the different shapes you can create. then you can even put values to the shapes and lines and that sort of thing. so it has huge potential for a high school math class.
 * __Google Sketchup__**

__**Google Sketchup problem**__