Teaching Guide
[Geometry In Your Neighborhood]
produced by 
[David Boyd]
Web Institute for Teachers, Summer, 2003



Menu

Introduction   l
Aim

Rationale

Goals and Objectives

Audience

Prerequisites

Subject-Matter

Instructional Plan

Materials

Assessment and Evaluation

Appendices

Resources

Glossary

 


Introduction:  Since the earliest days of civilization, men has always provided shelter for themselves and their families.  Even in the most primative of dwellings, geometry and architecture has coexisted.
 
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Aim: To  awaken students to their everyday interaction with geometry and architecture by using their neighborhood and  downtown Chicago's skyline.
 
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Rationale:  While teaching algebra,  I found  it most  challenging  to get my students  to connect  the materials taught to their everyday lives.  They just couldn't  rationalize the importance of the quadratic equation in their every day lives.  Since geometry is so visual,  it easily lends itself  to the students applying the  mathematics  studied in the classroom and relate it to the architecture that surrounds them.
 
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Goals and Objectives:  Students will be able to:

            a.   appreciate and enjoy architecture that surrounds them

          b.   identify geometric shapes that makes up a structure

          c.    use  floorplans  of a given structure to calculate area and perimeter of  plane figures.

             d.    investigate  the history of a stucture of their liking to see how geomtric figures were used  to  alleviate probems that may

                have arisen during construction.

           e.  understand the properties of polygons and circles.
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Audience: Sophmore high school students.
 
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Prerequisites:  Algebra 1
 
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Subject-Matter:  Areas of polygons, circles  and triangles.
 
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Instructional Plan:   Students  will go to selected websites  and view  photographs of   buildings  that comprises  the Chicgo  downtown skyline.  Upon viewing a building,  they will print out the  pictures and using color pencils, they will trace and identify the geometric shape that makes up the structure.   The students will pretend that they own a carpet house and they won the bid to furnish a particular floor of a building.  Include in your pricing floor moulding.
 
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Materials:  Computers, TI30  calculators, rulers, protractors
 
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Assessment and Evaluation
 
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Appendices (optional, if needed)

Resources

http://www.nycenet.edu/oit/math-kitecture/resources.htm

www.pbs.org/
wgbh/buildingbig/
index.html

 
Glossary

 

 

 


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Last updated on May 10, 2003.
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