Parallel Lines and Angles

Our first week went well even if I'm still not through Reasoning about Intersecting Lines and Angles, but we only had 40 minutes in each class every day this week.  Next week I should be able to really get going.

The next lesson is Reasoning about Parallel Lines and Angles.  I'm going to start that one focusing on vocabulary.  There will be a Poll Everywhere question where the students decide which angles are located interior from the picture below.  Each student will have a small printed copy of the figure.

Poll Everywhere is a very neat site where you can post a question and have the students answer via text or website and it will display the results in real time (or you can wait to show the results).   

  

When they decide what angles are interior (3, 4, 5, 6) we will discuss which angles are exterior (1, 2, 7, 8).  We will highlight on the small printout the Interior vs Exterior angles.  At this point we'll discuss what transversal, alternate, corresponding, and same side means. 

After this general discussion we will create a foldable to denote the different types of angles along a transveral.  I also include linear pair and vertical on the foldable.  

At this point we only focus on the terms and not the congruent/supplementary relationships on the outter flaps.  

Depending on time we will play a game 

The students then begin working through some reasoning questions where they make some assumptions about relationships between the angles when the lines are supplementary from their textbooks.  We will return to the foldable and add those relationships.  

Parallelogram Proofs

Things have been crazy the last couple of weeks as I have been trying to balance life between being the lead math teacher, the digital learning specialist, a mom, a wife, ect.  We went one-to-one in the last couple of weeks with iPads.

Today's lesson was not very awe inspiring on the surface, but it actually seemed to work.  First, I hate teaching proofs.  Like, how?  HOW do you teach students to think logically.  I frequently get asked for a list of alllllll the reasons you can use in a proof.  Imagine the doubt I get when I try to explain that there really isn't a comprehensive list that can reasonably be provided and there really isn't one particular 'answer' to writing a proof.  I did have my students add this webpage to their reading list in Safari and that seemed to somewhat appease them.

Tomorrow we will take a quiz so today we just practiced and practiced proofs.  I used this nifty little website for the students to individually go through.  There were 8 parallelogram proofs that I had them solve, but there are MANY more proofs that I will definitely utilize in the future now that we have iPads. 

This took about 45 minutes or so of students working and me meeting with them individually to go through the process.  As they finished, they continued to proofs about the five properties of parallelograms.  This was to be there homework and they were required to complete two. 

I hope to see the understanding from their quiz tomorrow.