# Engaging students: The area of a circle

In my capstone class for future secondary math teachers, I ask my students to come up with ideas for engaging their students with different topics in the secondary mathematics curriculum. In other words, the point of the assignment was not to devise a full-blown lesson plan on this topic. Instead, I asked my students to think about three different ways of getting their students interested in the topic in the first place.

I plan to share some of the best of these ideas on this blog (after asking my students’ permission, of course).

This student submission comes from my former student Deetria Bowser. Her topic, from Geometry: the area of a circle.

How can technology (YouTube, Khan Academy [khanacademy.org], Vi Hart, Geometers Sketchpad, graphing calculators, etc.) be used to effectively engage students with this topic? Note: It’s not enough to say “such-and-such is a great website”; you need to explain in some detail why it’s a great website.

An example of a helpful and engaging website for students is aaamath.com. On the left side of the webpage, there are a list of subjects. To find the Area of a circle lesson, select geometry and then area of a circle. The lesson is color coded with green being the “learn” part of the lesson, and blue being the “practice.”In the “learn” part of the lesson it explains briefly how to find the area of a circle. While I believe that and actually lesson should be taught before using this website, I think that the “learn” part provided by this lesson would be a great way to quickly review how to find the area of a circle. The next section (“practice”) gives a radius and the student is expected to calculate the area of the circle using said radius. I think this aspect of the lesson will help students gain speed and accuracy in computing the area of a circle. Although I do not think that this website can be used as a complete lesson on finding the area of a circle, on its own, I do believe that it could serve as a great review tool for students.

How could you as a teacher create an activity or project that involves your topic?

Hands on activities are easier to find for geometry topics, and finding the area of a circle is no exception. An example activity can be found in the YouTube video “Proof Without Words: The Circle.” In this video, the area of a circle is proved using beads and a ruler. The demonstrator creates a circle with silver beads, and shows that the radius of the circle can be measured using the ruler, and the circumference of the circle can be measured by unraveling the outermost part of the circle and measuring it (or by plugging the radius into the equation 2πr). The demonstrator then deconstructs the circle and traces the triangle created by it. From this he shows that $A=0.5bh = 0.5(2\pir)r = \pi r^2$. Instead of just using symbols to show this idea, I would create a guided explore activity where the students need to actually measure the radius and circumference of the circle they created as well at the base and height of the triangle created by deconstructing the circle they created. I would ask how the circumference and radius of the circle relate to the base and the height of the triangle. Once students recognize that the base of the triangle correlates with the circumference of the circle, and the radius correlates with the height, it will be easier to see why the area of a circle is calculated using the formula $A=\pi r^2$

What interesting (i.e., uncontrived) word problems using this topic can your students do now? (You may find resources such as http://www.spacemath.nasa.gov to be very helpful in this regard; feel free to suggest others.)

Practical uses for finding the area of a circle proved to be quite difficult. For example, most questions contain unrealistic examples such as “making a card with three semi-circles” (Glencoe). Although, many of these impractical exist, I found two example problems that could actually be used in the real world. The first example states “The Cole family owns an above-ground circular
swimming pool that has walls made of aluminum. Find the length of aluminum surrounding the pool as shown if the radius is 15 feet. Round to the nearest tenth” (Glencoe). This example is practical because when constructing a pool, one needs to know the surface area which can be found by using $\pi r^2$. The final example states “A rug is made up of a quadrant and two semicircles. Find the area of the rug. Use 3.14 for $\pi$and round to the nearest tenth!” (Glencoe). Although this seems less practical than the pool example, it is still related to real life because finding the area of a rug will help when deciding which rug to choose for a room.

References
M. (2012, May 29). Proof Without Words: The Circle. Retrieved October 06, 2017, from

(n.d.). Retrieved October 06, 2017, from http://www.aaamath.com/geo612x2.htm#pgtp
(n.d.). Retrieved October 06, 2017, from