Sharing Teaching Ideas: Improving Students' Understanding of Geometric Definitions

As middle school mathematics teachers work to restructure a mathematics curriculum that now contains little in the way of new ideas or concepts (Flanders 1987), careful attention must be paid to pedagogical ideas that enhance and facilitate the attainment of newly developed curricular goals. In particular, even as a greater amount of class time is spent considering geometric topics, care must be taken to employ activities that help students attain higher levels of geometric understanding (Crowley 1987; Talsma and Hersberger 1990).