Difficulty of Grade 9 in Visualizing the Separation and Rotation of Triangles Formed by Drawing an Altitude to a Triangle

Difficulty of Grade 9 in Visualizing the Separation and Rotation of Triangles Formed by Drawing an Altitude to a Triangle.

An Action Research

Presented to the Basic Education Department

Mount Carmel College

Baler, Aurora

Michelle A. Neri

A.Y.2016-2017

Introduction

In Grade 9 Mathematics, I have observed the topics which were the Triangle Angle Bisector Theorem, Triangle Proportionality Theorem, Right Triangle Similarity Theorem, Pythagorean Theorem, 45⁰-45⁰-90⁰ Right Triangle and the 30⁰-60⁰-90⁰ Triangle. Parallel to that, the Department of Education aims to develop a learner that can think critically and a certified problem solver (twin goal of Mathematics). This can be observed to the Learners’ Module where there is a huge difference from the old BEC (Basic Education Curriculum) textbook. The old book comprises of knowledge level questions and examples but K to 12 Learners’ Module comprises of more critical questions and examples.

        Upon having the three consecutive formative assessment which is based on the teacher, it was diagnosed that Grade 9  had failed the assessment. The students can best answer the given when the example figure on the board and the assessment figure was the same. Aside from the figure, the students can best answer the given when the triangles were already separated.

        In this research, my task is to creatively visualize the learners the separation and rotation of triangles so that in a long term, the learners are able to think critically on how they are to separate and rotate the figure without mere rote memorization where they can only imitate what was written on the board and to improve the learners’ formative as well as summative assessment.

What was my concern?

        Some of the students in Grade-9 failed in the formative assessment about the visualization of rotation and separation of triangles. The students had limited ability on how to visualize the rotation as well as the separation of triangles when an altitude is drawn from the hypotenuse. Students tend to imitate what was written on the board and find it difficult to answer those figures which had been rotated. It was also hard for the students to separate the triangles. I want to improve the learners’ ability in visualizing the rotation and separation of triangles formed by drawing an altitude to the hypotenuse. I decided to make creative teaching techniques using arts and manipulative.

Why was I concern?

1. The twin goal of Mathematics as stated on the curriculum guide of Mathematics introduce by the Department of Education is to hone problem solving and critical thinking skills among the 21st century learners. In line with that, there is a huge revision of all the teaching learning process as well as the learning materials. This can be observed by comparing the textbooks of the BEC or Basic Education Curriculum to the learners’ module of the K to 12 curriculum. The point is that the learners’ module of the K to 12 curriculum uses a more critical questions, examples and solutions. In the old curriculum, the sides of the right triangle usually indicated as a, b, and c where a is the shorter side, b is the longer side and c is the hypotenuse but in the K to 12 Curriculum, all letters on the Roman alphabet had been used. The concern was for me to think creatively on how to deliver the lessons in a way that the learners were able to grasp the learning in a more easy way but beyond the knowledge level especially on the rotation and separation of figures. This was done also to attain the goal of Mathematics and that was to hone critical thinking skills.

1. The study had been done to help the learners improve the result of the formative assessment. This is because of the low rate of scores that the learners gathered. The table below shows the interval of scores and the frequency of students who got the score.

TOTAL SCORE OF GRADE 9 EMERALD IN THREE

CONSECUTIVE FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT

The mean score of the data is 12.71 or 13. The passing rate should be 13 and above. Therefore, there were 17 who failed in the formative assessments.

Analysing the data above, the result will be:

[pic 1]

Based on the graph, the highest frequency is at the interval 11-15 which is the mean of the test, next is at 6-10 which was below the mean. It means that students who got a score from 1-10 failed or their score is below the average while those who got a score of 16-25 were considered as above the average. The focus of my action research was those students whose scores were below the average.