2017-2018 Geometry Scope & Sequence

Every year since having my blog, I've posted about my new scope and sequence.  Yes, this changes every year.  Every year, as I'm teaching I find things that I want to change or try for the next year.  I'm just used to it now, and consider re-writing my scope and sequence as something that I do every summer.  (Usually I do this at the very end of the school year during regents week, right before leaving for the summer.)

If you want to see my progression from past years, the posts are linked here:
July 2013(1) | July 2013(2) | Aug 2013 | June 2014 | Nov 2014 | July 2015 | Aug 2015 | July 2016

This year I'm making one big change.  I'm moving the constructions unit to the very end (unit 10).  Constructions are so weird.  There's too much to include it in my first unit (the Geometry basics unit is already long enough), but there really isn't quite enough to justify constructions being it's own unit.  At the beginning of the year, constructions include angle bisectors, perpendicular bisectors, equilateral triangles, and shapes inscribed in circles.  Throughout the year, constructions can be added.  For example, transformations, points of concurrency in triangles, and tangent lines of circles.  Throughout this past year, as I taught about inscribed and circumscribed circles, I had to re-teach angle and perpendicular bisectors.  My hope is that by moving constructions to the end of the year, I will save time by not having to re-teach the basic constructions before teaching more complex constructions.  Also, with moving constructions to the end of the year, I can plan what my students learn based on how much time we have.  Since constructions are only a small part of the regents, if some things aren't taught because the priority was to spend more time on a more heavily represented topic, I can (sort of) live with that. 

The small changes I made were re-wording some of my standards, and moving basic triangle topics to the first unit.  Last year, I eliminated my triangle properties unit.  Two topics that don't seem to be emphasized by common core are the Triangle Inequality Theorem and Midsegments of Triangles.  I want to still teach these topics (especially Triangle Inequality Theorem), so I'm still incorporating them, but not spending too much time on them.  This year I am also moving isosceles and equilateral triangles to the first unit.  Last year, I taught isosceles and equilateral triangles during the triangle proofs unit, and it felt disjointed to me.  My hope is that by moving isosceles and equilateral triangles to the beginning, we can just keep rolling through the proofs unit.

 Here is my new unit breakdown:
1-Essentials of Geometry (All the introductory lines and angles and triangles stuff)
2-Transformations (Congruence transformations only)
3-Triangle Proofs
4-Parallelograms
5-Similarity (Dilations can be found here)
6-Right Triangles
7-Measurement (All the fun 3D shape things)
8-Coordinate Geometry
9-Circles
10-Constructions

My thoughts:

• Since constructions is moved to the end, I'm excited to teach topics earlier in the year than normal.  (Proofs in the first quarter and coordinate geometry before spring break for example.)
• I hope that teaching proofs earlier doesn't mean that my students shut down earlier.
• In light of the additional Cavalieri's Principle topic being included in the June 2017 regents exam, should I just plan to cover all of the additional common core geometry topics?  Doing so does not align with my goal of focusing on the most important topics for longer periods of time.

I am very interested in hearing feedback on my last thought (question).  Please feel free to comment what you do as a Geometry teacher.  I would love to hear from you.