Geometer's Sketchpad Workshop, 2/12/05On Saturday, February 12th, Nancee Klaff, a Valley High School geometry teacher, led a workshop for teachers on ways to incorporate The Geometer’s Sketchpad (GSP) into their classrooms. GSP is an award winning dynamic geometry software package designed for students from grade 5 through college that Ms. Klaff feels can be a valuable tool for teachers. Ms. Klaff uses GSP because it gives her students an opportunity to discover the theorems in the high school geometry text rather than simply copying those theorems down and trying to memorize them. Ms. Klaff also believes GSP helps students learn to make and test conjectures because test cases can be created quickly and easily. Even though GSP was available to all teachers at Valley High School , Ms. Klaff was the only teacher using GSP with any regularity. The other teachers did not know how to use GSP and did not feel comfortable incorporating an unfamiliar tool into their lessons. While considering conducting a training session for the other mathematics teachers at her school, Ms. Klaff learned that other area schools were receiving GSP through TEAM-Math. She then decided to offer a GSP workshop through TEAM-Math. The WorkshopSince most of the workshop participants had never used GSP, the teachers began with basic constructions – points and lines – before moving on to simple shapes. Even with these relatively simple tasks, the difference between drawing and constructing becomes apparent. With a drawing, the object is to make something look like it has the properties being discussed. With a construction, those properties are the basis for building the shape. As an example, to construct an equilateral triangle you could use the radii of circles that share a radius. This way the sides of the triangle are guaranteed to be of equal length.
As one teacher put it, GSP helps students understand what they are really doing rather than just drawing something that looks right. Beyond GeometryOnce everyone began feeling comfortable with the software, the teachers were divided into groups based on the level of mathematics they taught. Each group then performed investigations designed to be relevant for their classrooms. While the geometry teachers worked on more advanced geometry investigations, other teachers worked on investigations more appropriate for an algebra I or algebra II classroom. This was one of the goals of the workshop: to demonstrate how GSP can be used for much more than geometry. After seeing how quickly the teachers became comfortable with GSP, Ms. Klaff hopes to offer similar TEAM-Math workshops in the future. Last updated
Friday, March 11, 2005 6:12 PM
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