Leah Yates Duke University Master of Arts in Teaching

Analysis of Geometry

Last fall, I took Geometry as one of my subject area courses. This is an excellent course for anyone who is planning to be a high school math teacher. The course mainly focused on Euclidean geometry but covered some aspects of hyperbolic and non-Euclidean geometry.

Geometry is a seminar course at Duke which means that each student is encouraged and expected to contribute to the discussion at each class meeting. I thought this was a really interesting part of the class. At first, I was really nervous because I had never been in a course where everyone was suppose to participate so openly, but as the semester progressed, the discussion part of class became something that I looked forward to. I liked this style of teaching so much, that I began integrating it into my own classroom. I always encourage the students to share and I often use popsicle sticks to call on them.

The content of the course was also really helpful and very relevant to high school geometry. Most of the geometry that we learned is the same geometry that is taught in high school except we explored the math more in depth than in a high school class and proved most of the theorems. We also learned how to make constructions using a rigid which is an activity that I think would be fun to try in a high school geometry class.

 

 

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