A highlight in my math class during this past month was teaching area and circumference of a circle. I’m excited to share with you a twist on the traditional teaching of this topic that made a huge difference for my students. One thing that has thrown my students for a loop in previous years was getting the area and circumference of a circle mixed up. Over the unit I often heard this chorus of questions: What was that formula again? 2 pi r squared? Which one is this again- circumference or area? When do I have to square the unit?
So, this year I wanted to start off by preemptively addressing those common misconceptions. How did I do that? By building students’ conceptual knowledge before we ever talked about formulas and calculations. I started with a discovery lab approach to get them to explore circles. (I’ve talked about the discovery lab approach before here). They would draw conclusions and build their understanding before using any formulas to solve problems. And as we near the end of the unit, I haven’t heard the same questions that were so common last year. Hooray! [Read more…] about Teaching Area and Circumference of Circles through Discovery
