Ralleia Experimental Primary Schools
Lesson: Circle
Teacher: Maria Karousatou
Class: E2
A. Teaching the Circle
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A.1 Rubric for initial assessment
Conclusions
The results from teaching with Scratch as a tool were very positive. The students could, by the end of this subject, tell the differences between the terms and be able to use them in order to cope with any problem that included circumference or area. The students were already familiar with Scratch, as long as they had been taught about it in the subjects of Computer Science. Any problems related with my own familiarity with it were quickly solved. To sum up, I reckon that the introduction of such modern but accessible tools in every day teaching would provide teachers
with great and creative solutions in a variety of situations of the teaching spectrum.
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As it seems above, the students were fully capable of drawing any circle using the compass. The detected problems, after the traditional teaching of the subject, were mainly focused on implementing theoretical knowledge into a practical problem. That is, they may have been aware of the various definitions, but they had a hard time when it came to relations between the terms. As a result, we decided to consolidate the new knowledge using Scratch.
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B. Teaching the Circle using Scratch
Given the fact that in this case, Scratch was to fulfil the aspect of consolidation, its structure was very plain. Scratch's mascot, the little cat, tried to help the students understand the meaning of terms such us “circle”, “center”, “radius”, “diameter”, “circumference”, making use of their visualization at the same time. Moreover, having clarified the basic terms, the little cat tests the students' knowledge with a quiz related to the circumference of a circle with given radius. Finally, there is a first introduction to calculating a circle's area, as a motive to talk about forces.
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Thus, scratch's presentation came to consolidate the key objective that we should meet. These were:
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Students to become accustomed to the new terminology and tell the differences between the definitions.
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Students to be able to calculate a circle's circumference by relating the number pi to the radius or/and the diameter.
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Student to draw circles of given radius using the compass.
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Students to solve problems that include the calculation of circumference and area.
B.1 Rubric for final assessment