Scarecrow is Finally Corrected!

Students once again took a stab at trying to correct the Scarecrow's statement about triangle lengths, and this time, I believe we all figured out what he should have really said. Five parts of his sentence were corrected!

We then figured out at least three different ways to determine how to solve the quilt problem from last night.

Tonight's Homework: Page 735 ( 19 - 31, all )

Baseball, Football, Basketball . . . and Quilting

The Pythagorean Theorem is used in many practical ways. We first warmed up our brains by completing a set of problems that challenged us to remember the relationships between the side lengths of a triangle and the type of triangle those three sides create (acute, obtuse, or right). Then we looked at the distances baseball players would have to throw the ball while standing in the infield. The distance from 3rd base to 1st is quite a bit farther than the distance between 1st and 2nd or 2nd and 3rd base, and we used the Pythagorean Theorem to determine the distance. Students came up with other examples that could employ the theorem to determine the distance of the hypotenuse.

Tonight's Homework: Complete the basketball and quilting problems on the purple worksheet. Be sure to show your work!

The Scarecrow Was Incorrect!

Today found us trying to tie together all of the pieces of the week, and as we did, we determined that the Scarecrow made several mistakes when he realized he had a brain. Students completed a yellow worksheet, and tried to write what the correct wording should have been to the Scarecrow's explanation of the Pythagorean Theorem.

Tonight's Homework: Oh, joy! Rapture! No homework tonight.

Triangles Surrounded by Squares

Students worked in groups of four to create seven different triangles with varying side lengths. The odd thing about these triangles was they were created with three squares, whose corners were the only parts touching each other. Once the triangles were created, students classified them as obtuse, acute or right triangles, and then looked for relationships between the sum of the squares of the two shorter sides and the square of the longer side.

Tonight's Homework: Because of the mix-up in last night's homework, there will be no new work to complete tonight.

More With Square Roots

Today, students used their equation-solving skills to solve problems that included square numbers or square roots. This lesson is an extension of what we covered yesterday in class.

Tonight's Homework: Lesson 9.1 ( 27-32, 41-43 and 48-55 ).

Picturing Square Numbers

We used plastic square tiles to build models of squares, and then made a table to compare the dimensions of the squares to the area. We then determined that there is a relationship between the length of the side of the square (s) and the area of the square. This led us to a discussion of square numbers and square roots.

Tonight's Homework: Lesson 9.1 ( 2 - 10, 15 - 22 )

Classifying Triangles

After watching a clip from "The Wizard of Oz", we realized that the Scarecrow knew a little bit about math. We then talked about one of the words he said (isosceles) and how it related to geometry.

Triangles can be sorted into groups based on two different factors: length of side and size of angle. If we look at the angles of a triangle, they always sum to 180 degrees. When using angle size, triangles can be labeled as acute, obtuse or right. When looking at the length of the sides of a triangle, triangles can be labeled as equilateral, isosceles, or scalene.

Tonight's Homework: Lesson 8.2 ( 2 - 21, 29 and 30 )