Preparing for Math Test #4

I only have 4 days to prepare for my test! This makes me so nervous. It's the last test of the semester too! I mean, besides the final. I want to get an A this time. Like, probably a 99.9%; this would make me happy. Hopefully writing this blog a long the way will have helped me understand the content a little bit better this time, so I can get a better grade.

When I am studying this weekend, I am going to tell myself NO! To facebook, texting, music, television, and any other distractions! I really want to get a good grade. I will completely all my homework, definitely going to take the review test. As well as look at the review sheet that I was given in class today. We watched our classmates presentations on lessons they would like to give that correspond to geometry! (Correspond! No pun intended!) I really liked everyone's presentations! I can't wait to be a teacher and do all of these fun things.

Geogebra!

In class today we received three work sheets to use on a website, or tool called Geogebra. I absolutely love this program. There are so many different, fun things you can do with this in the classroom. On our first worksheet, we were asked to create a triangle, and then using the different tools, we created a vector. and translated the object to another location on the opposite side of the Y axis. This was so helpful for a few different reasons, it showed the even though you move something, and translate it, the size of the object does not change. It really just "pushes" the object to new coordinates.

We also did some rotation activities. We were asked again to create a triangle, and just rotate it around the graph and show that the size does not change wherever you move the shape to. I really had so many problems with the rotation as a child. I am so happy I can see and understand it now. I wish I would have had a better teacher to help explain this to me, so I understood it back then. * Note to self, when a teacher: plan lesson so that the children actually understand it! Now if only I could understand nets...That will never happen.

Here is the link to Geogebra! The program is free! Download it!

If you look up images of translation, make sure to classify MATH. Otherwise DNA translation comes up. (Ha-Ha)

Rotations, Translations, and Reflections!

I won't even lie. When I was younger, and learning about translations, rotations, and reflections; I never ever understood it. I am not a spacial person, and cannot picture these things. It was still kind of hard for me to figure out these rotations and such at first. But I did realize they were actually pretty easy. For rotations, we were told a trick. If the rotation was 180 degrees, we turned the paper 180 degrees, and marked the new X and Y axis, and took the "new" points. Then flipped the paper to the original direction, and plotted these "new" points, and then we got a rotation! I thought this was so much easier.

The reflection part was easy for me now as well. I just reflected the shape over the new axis it gave me. I was actually able to do this very easily, I just counted how far away the points were from the old axis, and plotted it accordingly. The translation was fun too! It was almost like a puzzle, X+4, Y-1, and you just move the points! I Actually enjoyed the translations the most. I felt like this was so much easier for me now a days than it used to be.

I also found this website, and thought it was helpful and had many many lessons plans.
Cool Math Site!

Homework!!!!

I am attempting to work on some math homework right now. My attention span is actually else where, but I know that I have to do this homework to get credit, and pass the class, and graduate! Yippee!

But, I am confused about what the difference is between area, and surface area.  Area is only for two-dimensional shapes whereas surface area is for three-dimensional shapes. You can measure the area of a square, and the surface area of a cube. But you cannot measure the area of a cube; only one side of the cube. I made this conclusion from This fun site!

On my homework, there is a question about how much paint you would need to paint a house, I need to use surface area for this. These questions are kind of fun and actually help you learn. It is an actual application in which you can actually use in the real life, this makes math more memorable!

Volume!

We did an activity on leaning about volume. I already knew about volume of an object, but it never hurts to learn more especially how to teach it! Volume is described as "the amount of 3-dimensional space an object occupies, or capacity."* In class we were using a prism, and a cube, and the pyramid. I guessed that we would only use 2 pyramids full of rice when we filled up the cube. Boy was I wrong! The cube actually took three pyramids full of rice. The same thing happened when we used a cube and a cylinder... but what does this tell us about the formula for volume.. Hmm.


From this activity we discovered on our own, the forumla for the volume of a Pyramid the formula we came up with was, Vpyramid= 1/3(b)(h)(l). I feel so smart for coming up with this on our own!

*The definition of volume came from: This website, Math is fun!

Discovering PI! Not pie!

We did a worksheet in math today on measuring and discovering PI! I was never taught why PI was PI. I was just taught that PI was 3.14........ and on and on. But never an explanation as to why PI is PI! We got 5 different objects, and found the circumference, and the diameter. We measured it with a string and measured the string on a meter stick. (We were having too much fun I think!) 

After we did that, we were asked to divide the circumference by the diameter. We found out that the answer we should be getting from that was 3.14. Unfortunately my measuring was not very accurate but, we got close enough that we could tell! So we learned that PI is actually circumstance divided by diameter!  I saw this website about PI, and this guy goes into a lot of detail. Almost beyond crazyness! Detailed PI