Tangent, sine, cosine FLASHCARDS

Nothing all that brilliant in this post regarding the actual teaching of sine, cosine, and tangent… BUT, I do have a couple of resources that might be useful. If not brilliant, it was at least extremely effective. =) I took the Prentice Hall California Geometry workbook, cut out and combined the tan, sin, and cos [...]

The Golden Ratio

I’ve never done a lesson on it, though I’ve mentioned in classes before. Now I wish I could have done more!! I started by asking them questions like, What makes a body “proportional”? Why aren’t babies proportional? Why aren’t Barbies proportional? What is the standard of being proportional? What am I comparing with? Why is [...]

Properties of Quads UPDATE

I had previously written the update in the actual post on Properties of Quadrilaterals, but realized the summary sheet needed a bit of explaining. * UPDATE: I’ve added a Properties Summary Sheet to the Box widget that I should have given them after the properties checklist as reference. If I were to re-do this activity, [...]

Properties of Quadrilaterals

FINALLY, a lesson for this section that I’m happy with. I’d say that for the past 7 years I’ve been trying different ways of having students “discover” the properties of the special quadrilaterals (rectangles, rhombuses, squares, trapezoids, etc.), but it seemed like every time I tried they were either terrible at the drawings so that [...]

Vocab Scavenger Hunt

I used to hate introducing new vocabulary words. I still swear by my Verbal Vocab for constantly reviewing vocab words throughout the school year, but oftentimes in Geometry, the lecture on the introduction of over a dozen new vocab words in one class can get so dull, dry, and just boring. Kids mostly tune me out [...]

Movies in Math. Math in Movies.

Here is a website with a compilation of short movie clips on math and physics that you can freely download. http://www.math.harvard.edu/~knill/mathmovies/index.html I use the Shrek clip as the introduction to inverses and contrapositives in Geometry.(This one was also on YouTube.) The PowerPoint I used is in the Box widget.

Geometry Verbal Vocab and Tools

*update 2* This is, BY FAR, the BEST thing to happen to my Geometry class! EVER!! *update 1* Having a physical set of flashcards ready is also nice when students come in for tutoring. If I know it’s their vocab that they lack, I sit them down w/ my set and just have them go through [...]

Silent Matching Game

I originally came up with this for the Geometry chapter on consecutive, alternate interior/exterior, same-side interior/exterior angles, but I find it to be quite nice for the beginning slew of intro words to Geo as well. Basically, unlike flashcards, the answer or definition to a word does not go on the back of the flashcard, [...]

Geometry Taboo

(In honor of my ridiculously competitive and dear friend, JO.) She helped me come up with this game and I’ve wanted to try it for a while now. It’s CST this week so I finally decided to give it a go.  It actually took much less time than expected (more than do-able in about 75 [...]

Pyramids

I had to scan this for a friend today and so I thought I might post it. It’s a template to building a transparent pyramid w/ two standing triangles inside. My kids were having a really hard time visualizing it a few years back so I created this. They had to solve for the sides [...]