This is the second installment of a new feature, Heard on Campus. What’s it like for students at Poly during outdoor and virtual learning? We asked math teacher Linda Russo and some of the students in her Geometry class. Here’s what they had to say.

Linda Russo

“My main goal is to help students view the world through a geometric lens and to use the environment as a learning tool. I look for ways to use the outdoor learning setting to capitalize learning. This is a shift from extensive use of technology although we still incorporate tech programs such as Geogebra.”

“In geometry, the students are studying distance and midpoints,” explained teacher Linda Russo.  “They were instructed to find the midpoint of each side length of the tent.  Each student was given a 10.5 inch diameter plastic hoop. I placed a 72-inch old school measuring stick in the center of the tent, which they were not allowed to touch. The guidelines were to use the hoop, measuring stick, and any other items they had with them to measure the lengths, locate the midpoints between lengths, and render a sketch of the footprint of the tent with accurate measurements.” 

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Gemma Pauls ’24

“When in the tents we used hoops with a 10.5” in diameter to find the lengths of the tent,” said Gemma Paul. “Knowing this measurement, we placed the hoops along each of the sides and calculated the measurements. Once we had found the length, the width of the tent, a rectangle, and the midpoint of each side, I used Pythagorean Theorem to find the diagonal. Once I had found the measurements, I came to the assumption that the midpoint of the length of the tent is the same midpoint as the diagonal.”

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Khari Freeman ’24

“Using the hoops was a fun and interactive way to better understand midpoint, which has overall made it a lot easier to do it. Just using the hoops, we were able to measure the distance around the tents, and we used that information to find the midpoint. This activity made it easier for me since it seemed complicated at the start, but it made me realize that it was much more simple than I made it out to be because of the way we did the activity in class.”

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Julia Rosenberg ’24

“Our geometry class has used pictures of things around Poly to practice measuring different types of angles. In this image I measured the angles on a flight of stairs outdoors.”