Sunday, March 30, 2014

Geometry Interactive Notebook - The Seventh Unit

Our seventh unit was our unit on Polygons.  This unit was interesting.  My students were relieved to get a break from triangles, although they did realize that triangles are still a small part of this unit.  I've tried to explain to them that they are just getting a small snippet of all that is Geometry, and if we were to learn more about Geometry it would be more than triangles and therefore much more complicated.  They're still not completely convinced though.

As usual, the unit began with a pocket page and a table of contents.  We had one page of vocabulary (not pictured).
 We began our unit with the Polygon Angle Sum Theorem.  I got this idea from a picture on Pinterest.  I have no idea whose idea it was originally though.  This really helped the kids understand how angles of polygons are calculated and I noticed that my students this year had a much easier time remembering the formula than last year.  Interestingly, after this activity I'd predicted that they would forgo the formula and use the picture method instead.  I was wrong.
 This same day we also covered the Polygon Exterior Angles Theorem.  This idea is less tangible for my students. 
 We then moved into parallelogram properties.  I introduced students to the properties and they took notes under the flaps.  We completed examples on a separate page.  I need to find a better way to do this for next year.  My students still don't know all of their parallelogram properties.
Our next lesson was on parallelogram proofs.  We did not spend much time on this topic.  I struggled to teach proofs and my students are struggling to understand them.  My plan of attack is to spend two weeks on proof before beginning review.  We practiced proofs on a separate worksheet (not pictured).
 After proofs, we began special parallelograms.  I used the same flap method as I did previously, and again, my students still don't remember the properties of special parallelograms.  There must be a better way (that does not involve an extensive, time-consuming activity)!
 After our lesson on trapezoids (I completely skipped kites because it is not tested and time was an issue because of an abundance of snow days), I had students complete these charts summarizing the properties of parallelograms, special parallelograms, and trapezoids.
 At the end of our unit, we studied Coordinate Geometry Proofs.  Students have a difficult time connecting distance, slope, and midpoint formulas to properties of quadrilaterals.  I made this hand out to have students fill-in and hopefully think about how these things are connected.  We practiced coordinate proofs on a separate worksheet (not pictured). 
Thus ends another unit in our interactive notebooks.  This unit concludes our module on congruence.

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Geometry Interactive Notebook - The Sixth Unit

Our sixth unit was properties of triangles.  I kind of liked having this unit follow our unit on Congruent Triangles.  It made it easier not trying to go back and forth between writing proofs and solving for parts of triangles numerically.  I also liked that it gave students a break and the comfort of going back to "normal" math after spending so much time on proofs.


Overall, I kept the notes on this unit fairly simple.  The one day that we did something a little different was when I taught the lesson on the Interior Angle Sum Theorem.  My students came to Geometry already knowing that angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees, but they did not know why.  We did an informal proof by cutting card stock into triangles.  We traced the triangle into our notebooks and labeled the vertices.  We drew a line on the other side of the page, and arranged the vertices of a triangle to form a line.  I loved doing this activity with the students, it provided a perfect visual, and also laid the foundation for our next lesson - the Exterior Angle Theorem.

My next few pages were very simple.  For these lessons we discussed good note-taking habits because not all teachers will tell students exactly what to write and where to write it.  
 
 
 
The one day that I was able to include a good foldable did not actually happen.  I summarized the points of concurrency into a three-flap-foldable, but that day we had a snow day.  Since we were already in a time-crunch due to multiple snow days and the looming winter break, I did not get to teach the lesson.  I will be going over this in the next few weeks before we begin our review.

The foldable summarized the triangle segment that created the point of concurrency, the name of the point of concurrency, and the location of the point of concurrency.  When I teach these next month, I plan to have students discover them through construction.
 
That's all for unit 6.  My next unit was polygons and the last for the module on congruence.

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Geometry Interactive Notebook - The Fifth Unit

After weeks of many things simply getting in the way of my blogging, I am finally back.  Moreover, I'm determined to go back to blogging once a week.  Hopefully I am able to meet my goal.  In the next few weeks I'll be posting all of my interactive notebook updates, and a few more general updates as well.  We only have 14 weeks of school left.  I cannot believe it!

My fifth unit was the dreaded proof - congruent triangle proofs to be exact.  I must say that this year definitely turned out better than it did last year.  I know that one major contributing factor was that I had more practice.  The other was that I fearlessly added more days to the unit for practice.  Last year I blazed through the curriculum with the intentions of tying up any loose ends during review.  This year I'm not as worried about saving a whole month and a half for review.  By then the students that were lost all year had basically given up so the review is not helping them all that much anyway.

Since I dedicated much of this unit to practice, I kept the pages very simple.  We started with properties that are used for proof on page 47. 

 

We identified corresponding parts on pages 48-49.

After a two day activity, (Note to self:  Extend activity to 3 days next year.) we discovered the postulates and theorems that determine triangles are congruent.  We turned them into a little flip book to add to page 50. 

 On pages 51-53 we practiced proofs with the five congruent triangle postulates and theorems.

 

Our last page for the unit was for the CPCTC theorem.

Overall, this unit was pretty sparse for actual notebook additions.  We did many worksheets this unit to save time on copying problems and diagrams.




Thank you!

Thank you for being patient as I got my new blog set up.  I am slowly releasing updated versions of old posts while I add new content.  Plea...