Sunday, November 17, 2013

Geometry Interactive Notebook - The Fourth Unit

Our fourth unit in Geometry this year is Transformations.  This is bittersweet for me.  I love teaching this unit, and next year Common Core is going change it.  From the materials my state has provided on exactly what is expected under Common Core, transformations are done through constructions.  I anticipate this to be a nightmare.

What I especially loved about teaching Transformations this year was that I learned so much from teaching it last year.  I was able to anticipate pit falls, and guide students around them.  I also love teaching transformations before congruent triangle proofs.  I feel like I'm giving my students a more concrete context from which they can work with proofs.

In the notebook, we started with the usual pages:  unit pocket (36), table of contents (37), and vocabulary (38).  I've changed how I do vocabulary a little bit.  Instead of stopping in the middle of a lesson to have students fill out the vocabulary flaps, I pre-printed each vocabulary word, definition, and a fact/characteristic.  I left it up to the students to fill in the example and nonexample.  I gave students the vocabulary words on the first day and we glued them all in at once.  (This did not work so well because I forgot to remind students to fill these in.  What I need to do next time is stop during the lesson and give students a chance to fill in their example/nonexamples or have students do so at the end of the lesson.)

Most of the pages we did in this unit were pretty simple.  We took notes on Translations and glued in mini-graphs of our examples (39).

We did the same for reflections (40).  In my notebook, I did the graphs on a graph post-it note (a.k.a. the greatest thing ever!).  For my students, I made mini-graphs using SMART Notebook and Microsoft Word for them to glue in.


Rotations was by far my favorite page (42).  I borrowed this awesome idea from The Radical Rational (@pamjwilson).  To be completely honest, in the past I just memorized the rules, saw that they produced a rotation and encouraged my students to memorize the rules without ever really understanding them myself.  Thanks to this innovation, I was able to have my students stop and think about what is happening during the rotation, and we discovered the rules of rotation together.  In our notebooks, we color coded a set of axes and attached them to the page using brads.  (I bought a pack of 100 at Michael's for $2.99 - and used a 40% off coupon.)  With the brads we are able to rotate our little axes in our notebooks - so exciting!  We used the rest of the page for notes.


We took notes on Compositions of Transformations (43).

Page 44 is dedicated to Properties of Transformations.  On this day we did a little exploration activity.  I gave students a worksheet with three sets of questions.  Each set related to a congruence transformation.  Students graphed quadrilaterals, completed a transformation, and then analyzed whether the transformation changed the orientation or parallelism of the quadrilateral. 

Next unit is Congruent Triangles.  This will be interesting. 

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