Bio: (in third person) Robert Strong Is a math teacher at Corliss Early STEM High School in Chicago Illinois. Robert is also the Virtual Online School Mentor at Corliss and an Accelerated Geometry summer school teacher.
Narrative of Amazing Teaching Moment: My amazing teaching lesson is actually a pre-assessment for an Introduction to Geometry unit. I use cuisenaire rods to give the students a chance to get out of their seats and a chance in address multiple intelligences.
I start by grouping students in groups of four. Each group is given a set of the cuisenaire rods and two of the students in each group must create as many geometrical shapes as possible in an allotted amount of time. Next, the two none creators of the groups must name as many of the shapes as they can.
The students really love this activity and really get into building as many shapes as possible. They actually even become competitive with the other groups.
This activity serves the dual purpose of being an excellent pre- assessment and acting as an access point to the Geometry unit.
1. Hands On Engagement: Students have easy access to the lesson immediately by playing with manipulatives to discover patterns, relationships, and to wonder in order to develop conceptual understandings.
2. Inter-Disciplinary Activity: The activity inspires other teachers to bring their content knowledge/focus into the activity; promotes rich cross-curricular connections. 3. Real World Connections- Students have opportunities to connect their learning to how the human race has used these same tools to evolve into the society we are today.
4. Prior Knowledge - Teachers assess their students’ prior knowledge while simultaneously introducing new content and drawing on their students’ previous experiences as a point of engagement.
5. Collaboration- Students work interdependently to solve problems bigger than themselves and benefit from each individual’s perspective rooted in their diverse cultural, experiential, and socio-economic backgrounds.