Renee Jagodzinski								3/21/07
MED300/Cushman							Journal week 7

Date: 3/19

	Today we did a lesson on finding the center and radius of circles by practicing 

with graphs of circles.  They had to create circles with a compass given the center and 

the radius and they had to find the radius and center of a circle by looking at the circle on 

a graph.  While doing the lesson, I learned that involving instruments throughout your 

lesson allows the lesson to be more interesting to students and allows the students to 

understand the content more clearly.  They tend to get involved with the lesson more and 

enjoy doing the activities instead of just feeling like they have to do this stuff.  For 

example, when doing the lesson on circles and using a compass to complete the lesson, 

they wanted to do more problems and learn more.  Also, by using a compass on 

problems, it allowed the students to see precise answers instead of just using freehand.

	When looking to find the center of a circle that was not on the origin, I related it 

to fractions by showing them the center would be easier to see if you looked at the circle 

as a pie.  I had them cut the circle in half up and down and cut the circle in half again 

across.  Where the two lines touched that would be the center point.  This seemed easier 

for the students to understand instead of counting the coordinates each way.

	Throughout the lesson I mostly engaged the students by guiding them through the 

problems with questions.  They had some trouble using the compass, so I helped them 

with that and made suggestions that might make it easier to use the compass.  For 

example, in the 2nd exercise of the anticipatory set, students had to find the center and 

radius.  I told them to put a dot where the center was and state the coordinates.  I asked 

them what the radius was and told them that if they had any trouble, to look back at the first exercise that we did together.

	One way I could’ve changed the lesson is maybe have them work together as a 

group on a few problems.  This way they are able to communicate together and work 

together to figure out the answers.  For example, we had 6 kids; we could split the group 

into 3 in each group and talk to each other about each problem.  They may comprehend 

the material better by talking to their peers.  While they are in groups, I would still be 

guiding them through problems and answering any questions they have.  But, I would 

not be guiding them as much as if we were going through a problem together on the 

board because I really want them to communicate with each other.  

Date:  3/21

	Today we did a lesson on working with the area formula for a circle.  Students 

had to work with problems dealing with taking given information from the problems and 

substituting it into the area formula to find the area, radius, or diameter.  When working 

with the lesson, I learned that I need to make sure everyone understands the material.  I 

need to make sure that I am not letting only one person answer all the questions all the 

time.  For example, when we were doing problems together on the worksheet and asking 

questions about the problems, there was only one student mainly trying to answer each 

question while the other students just watched or mumbled answers that no one could 

really hear.  
	
I mostly engaged the students throughout the lesson by asking questions and 

allowing them to answer.  I also allowed them to do some problems on their own to see 

if they understand the material and can do it on their own.  When they had questions, I 

didn’t respond by giving them the answer, but asked another question to help them in 

figuring out the problem and understanding the problem better.  For example, looking at 

the problem where they are given the diameter and need to find the area, many students 

didn’t know how to find the radius.  So, I asked them if they were given the radius how 

would they find the diameter and then they just had to do the opposite to find the radius 

given the diameter.  

	They seemed to have many misconceptions with things this material consisted of.  

When dealing with problems involving fractions, they had a hard time dividing a fraction 

by a fraction.  I had to remind them that they had to change the sign and flip (reciprocal) 

the bottom fraction.  Then just multiply the fractions together.  They had a hard time 

turning a decimal into a fraction.  For example, one of the problems involved 

multiplying ½ by ½ and a student answered .25, but he had a hard time putting .25 into a 

fraction.  They had trouble seeing the different between multiplying something by 2 and 

squaring something.  I tried to help with their understanding by showing the difference 

between them.  They also had trouble with multiplying fractions.  They kept on mixing 

multiplying fractions with adding fractions.  But, I told them that when adding they need 

to find a common bottom part of fraction (denominator) and adding the top part of the 

fraction (numerator).  When multiplying, all you do is multiply the top and multiply the 

bottom.  

	Since I know I need to make sure that all students are understanding the material, 

I think next time I teach the lesson I will try to learn their names as best as I can so I will 

be able to call on people to answer questions I ask, instead of just one person answering 

all the questions all the time.  All the students need to get a chance to at least try 

answering a problem even if they don’t answer it correctly.  At least you know that they 

are thinking about the problem and ways on how to solve it.