Friday, March 23, 2018

Protractor or Compass?

Yesterday in class we came in and were told that we were going to learn how to use a protractor. Initially I thought it was the tool that you put your pencil into in order to draw a circle, so I was of course confused as to why we were having a lesson on this because I thought there was no way drawing a circle could be that hard that it is necessary to have a lesson on how to use the tool to create it. I was a little shocked when our teacher pulled out the protractors and to my surprise, it was not the tool used to draw circles. It is the tool when turned to the side is looks like a capital D. It is used to measure or draw angles. Which is going to come in handy while learning geometry.

We then got a worksheet to practice using a protractor after being given a small instruction sheet on how to use a protractor. We learned that if you are two degrees above or two degress under the actual degree that the angle is, then your answer is still correct but anymore than that is going to be incorrect. Sometimes there are going to be angles that don't reach far enough for you to be able to measure the angle, so you can use a ruler to draw an extended line from the angle so that you can more accurately find the degree of the angle being measured. Below is the protractor and the instruction sheet on how to use the protractor.

https://www.mathsisfun.com/geometry/protractor-using.html

2 comments:

  1. Haha, I love your bolg Devin! I really enjoyed learning about the prtractors. There is a lot less confusion in my life now. I too would classify it as the tool that looks like a capital D, or as the tool to draw a half circle. Never did I classify it as the tool to identify angles. Thanks for sharing!

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  2. I really like measuring angles using protractors. I actually helped my 4th graders learn how to use them and I even gave my mentor teacher this sheet along with a few other things from class. The kids noticed on their math books that a protractor was being used as a mouth. So I kind of laughed when you said capital D because all I could see was a smile and then I actually thought about it and was like, "Oh yea."

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