## Geometry – Solids

April 7, 2010

For the chapter on solids, I made a booklet for all of the types of polyhedra and their formulas. We then had classwork each day that used shapes to show students what went where.

What worked

• Booklet put everything together in a convenient package.
• Students really liked the shapes to show where the numbers went on the classwork.
• I liked just using my slate to write the numbers on the document — this will be even better when we get our document camera!
• This year, I did all of the surface area, and then all of the volume (except for spheres). I liked the flow of that better.
• It helped taking one day each for prism and pyramid surface area. Then, I did volumes on one day.

What didn’t work

• Since the booklet ended up being just a list of formulas, it might have been easier to give them a “cheat sheet” like the one on the test, so they got used to working with it.
• The classwork was good as far as it went, but it would have been nice to spend more time having them work problems.
• While the students seem to understand the process as we would work through the classwork, the test showed that many of them don’t know how to match the figure with the correct formula. When a student tells me that the formula for the volume of a prism is $\pi r^2h$ something is wrong.

Ideas for next year

• More classwork problems!
• Matching game:
• Make some cards with the shapes on one side and the formulas on the other.
• Print them out in two sets, each in a different color.
• Have students put them out so that one color shows the shapes and the other color displays the formulas.
• Students take turns picking out matches. If they pick the wrong card, they have to put them back in the same spot.
• The student with the most matches at a table wins.