Renee Jagodzinski								3/28/07
MED300/Cushman							Journal week 8

Date: 3/26

	Today we did a lesson concentrating on angles measuring 90 degrees and 180 

degrees.  Students looked at the sum of angles in a triangle and how that relates to the 

measure of a straight line.  Then, they had to find either the supplement or complement 

given a measure of an angle.  

	Going through the lesson with students, I learned that you need to show students 

different ways of understanding a concept.  Students comprehend the material better and 

they can observe more things that go along with a concept.  For example, when doing the 

anticipatory set, students either didn’t know degrees in a straight line but they knew the 

sum of degrees in a triangle or they didn’t know the degrees in a triangle, but they knew 

the degrees of a straight line.  So, by showing them now angles add up to a straight line, 

students are able to see and understand better that a straight line and the sum of angles of 

a triangle both add up to 180 degrees.

	Although, when doing this lesson, I feel that a protractor would help better with 

their understanding since it gives you exact measurements and can help with any other 

complications students may have with understanding the material.  For example, some 

students didn’t know the degrees of a straight angle or the sum of angles in a triangle.  

The protractor has degrees on it.  This is something I had some difficulty with.  I was 

trying my best to try to explain how the angles of a straight go into a straight line, but I 

don’t feel like I made myself clear enough and wish I could’ve made that clearer for the 

students.

	When working with complementary and supplementary angles, we tried 

connecting it to the students by creating a little easier way to remember the measurements 

of complementary and supplementary angles.  We abbreviated C for complementary and 

S for supplementary and we said that C comes before S in the alphabet and 90 comes 

before 180 on the number line.  So, C = 90 and S = 180.  We hoped that this will help 

them remember which measurement goes with which type of angle.

	While doing the developmental activity, students had a hard time adding and 

subtracting with the angles depending on whether the angles were complementary or 

supplementary.  So, I tried to make it easier for them by asking questions that allows them 

to work out the problem in little steps.  For example, students had a hard time trying to 

find the supplement of an 73 degrees angle.  So, I asked them questions like how many 

would it take to get to an 80 degree angle?, then how many more do you need to get to 

180?.  Once they find those two numbers, then they just have to add it together.  They 

seemed to understand the supplement of an angle after going through these little steps.

Date: 3/28

	Today we did a lesson on looking at acute, obtuse, right, and straight angles and t

triangles.  Students had to look at triangles and angles to describe why they are either 

acute, obtuse, right, or straight.  They had to use protractors to measure different angles 

and then decide which is acute, right, obtuse, right, or straight.  

	One thing I learned about doing this lesson if that sometimes you need to give 

hints to your students to help them along with a problem.  Giving hints doesn’t 

necessarily give the students the answer, but allows them to think about a problem in 

different ways.  It also helps with students who a frustrated when dealing with a problem.  

For example, when looking at the part of the lesson where you had to measure the angles 

using a protractor, the angles that were backwards created a misunderstanding for the 

students because they always looked at the number line above the line on the protractor to 

find the degrees of an angle.  So, I got them a hint to look at the angle and decide whether 

the angle is acute, obtuse, straight, or right.  Then, use the protractor to decide what the 

angle is because if you see that an angle is acute, then the degrees has to be less than 90 

degrees.  So, if you look at the numbers above the line, you will see that they are above 

90 degrees.

	Even though I gave them that hint to look at the angles before measuring the 

angle, I would’ve still like to make clearer the reason behind switching or deciding which 

set of number’s to use on the protractor besides telling them that the angle is backwards.  

Some students didn’t understand the reasoning between looking at the different number 

lines on the protractor depending on forwards or backwards angles.  So, I would’ve liked 

to been able to explain more the reasoning between switching the different number lines.

	I mostly engaged the students with this lesson.  We did the anticipatory set 

together and a little bit of a the developmental activity together.  But, the students mostly 

went through the worksheet by themselves with myself guiding them or answering 

questions wherever needed.  We went over any misconceptions the students had so they 

were able to understand what they did wrong with the problem.