Keaton's Reflection About the Landfill Building Design
Happy holidays everyone. I have just had the best news ... Keaton from 5MJ has been published online.
As a part of the on going action groups, 5MJ students have been busy designing a community building for the Serpong Landfill site using bamboo chopsticks. The students have been following an inquiry into geometry and making these model houses has been the summative assessment for this Math unit. I asked the students to label their model houses with all the geometry terms that they could find. This led to discussions such as "What angle is that? Is it a true right angle?". The students had tried to measure the angles but as their models are in 3D it was difficult to do. Our plastic protractors couldn't measure it.
Yesterday I used the SWA iPads and an app called A+ Measuring Finger App with the students so that they could measure the angles in their model houses. The iPads were used to photograph the model houses and then a virtual protractor inside the app can measure any angle needed. All you have to do is draw the angle over the top of the photo with your finger and the app reads the measurement.
The students were challenged to find 5 different types of angles such as acute, obtuse, straight, right and reflex. I then asked the students to write a reflection on their blogs and include the photos taken on the iPad with the angle and measurement. The point of the lesson was to deepen the students understanding of the types of angles found in buildings. Keaton wrote an excellent reflection. He did it very quickly. I was really impressed with his writing so last night I quickly edited the video that I had taken of the lesson and sent Keaton's reflection with the video to the Apple Distinguished Educators Site called htpp://appitic.com. I sent it off at about 10.30pm. This morning I got a reply from the site owner telling me that it is wonderful and she would publish it today.
Take a look - it is already published http://appitic.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blo...
That's amazing considering the site administration is in Mexico!! What a small world we live in!
Jane
