Area & Perimeter of Rectangles and Squares

UPDATE: I uploaded instructions on how to set up the flip-book at the bottom of the post. 

Yesterday, we began our unit on Area and Perimeter. I always put somewhat easy examples in foldables so that students can have the basic understanding of how to solve a problem. In this foldable, the problems are relatively easy because I wanted to use this with my basic special education students as well. (I also think that the colored papers that I chose are on point! :))

We completed the Rectangles and Squares flap today in class. I actually had the students solve for all missing sides of the rectangles independently because they have seen special right triangles throughout the semester. More than half of my students figured out the area and perimeter by themselves before I even started the notes. The most common mistakes were on questions 1 and 3 when students had to find the perimeter. Some students wanted to say perimeter = 8√3 instead of (4 + 4√3).

After finding the area and perimeter of rectangles, we moved on to squares. Squares went by so fast because we practiced many times with squares in our special right triangles unit. Some kids were done within 5 minutes of me telling them to try to complete examples 1-4. 

After the notes, I had students complete the following Area & Perimeter Partner Activity. I have students work with a partner and they had to both choose a separate column to complete. I really like partner activities because it eliminates cheating in my classroom because students can check their work with the partner to make sure they both got the same answer. If they don't get the same answer, they start to collaborate to check each others work. It also amazes them that two completely different problems could result in a common answer! :)

You can find the foldable here (if you need the directions, let me know): CLICK HERE

You can find the partner activity here: CLICK HERE

Flip-Book Instructions: Click Here

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Properties of Rectangles

In a previous post, I described how the day went for beginning quadrilaterals with parallelograms and rectangles.

Day 2:  We completed the following rectangle notes:

After the rectangle notes, I had students complete the following rectangles maze. There is a total of four different forms because I have students in groups of 4 in my classroom. Some of my students had a hard time from the first box on form A because they did not read the question (find TU). I really emphasized to my students that "YOU MUST READ WHAT THE PROBLEM IS ASKING FOR!"

Day 3: We played Kahoot to review parallelograms and rectangles and I feel like this was extremely helpful in reviewing parallelograms and rectangles. We were supposed to start rhombi today, but half of my students were not ready to move on yet. You can find the Kahoot that we used when you click here:  https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/41f58fa7-8c1d-4ef6-a47e-2006342ec94e

I have one person from each group log on to the website and they represent their table. I tell students not to press an answer unless everybody in the group agrees. I love playing Kahoot because students who do not participate in class contributes to the discussion and they get really competitive.

You can find the rectangles maze here: CLICK HERE

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Solving Equations Flipbook

File for the Post: Solving Equations Flipbook

I was looking through my interactive notebook this past week and thought I'd share one of my favorite lessons. I teach geometry and I always start the year off with a quick one-week algebra review to get my students re-familiarized with solving multi-step equations.

Day 1: Students will tape down the steps to solving multi-step equations on the left side of their notebook and we go through the steps together and make little notes. It is extremely important that you make the flip-book with the students because if not, there will always be one student in each class that raises their hand and says "Something's wrong with my book!" I like to highlight each step that I take to solve the equation and I have students check their work for each problem.

I do have students check their work in their flip-book, but the pictures above are notes to myself to remind students what to do. 

Day 2:  Students walk in my classroom and cut out the solving equation puzzle pieces. Students have to match up the equation with the correct solution. I give them about 30 minutes to complete this puzzle in their notebook. Students show their work on the right side of the notebook and in some classes, I tell students what box is the top left one (depending on their level) and they have to figure out the rest.  

Once a student finishes, I have them raise their hand to show me their completed work. If they have their puzzle done correctly, I hand them this riddle worksheet. 

Overall, students were re-familarized with solving multi-step equations in 2 days! After that, we started algebraic properties of equality and introduced algebra proofs. Let me know, if you would like to see the foldables that I used for algebra proofs. :)

I am also wearing this shirt any time we review solving equations... From my experience, students are visual learners and they remember any of my shirts! lol  Click here if you want one too!

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Quadrilaterals: Properties of Parallelograms

Today was just one of those "GREAT" teaching days. I had so much planned for my students and I really wanted them to conquer the properties of parallelograms. I used two different types of colored paper (purple and lime green) to make my flipbook because I want students to see the relationship between parallelograms, rectangles,  rhombi, and squares. This worked out great because I didn't even tell the students that they all had properties in common, they asked me if they were related because they were in the "same color." :)

I started with the vocabulary page first because many of my students accommodations include "front-load vocabulary". Frontloading vocabulary is powerful for my special education & ELL students because I can help them learn the meaning of new words and strengthen their independent skills for constructing meaning from text.

After the vocabulary section, I started with the five properties of parallelograms. I pulled out my whiteboards and had students make 3 columns (Property, Picture, and how to solve). This turned out better than expected because all of my students referenced their whiteboards throughout the entire class.

After we made this chart, we started on the three parallelogram example problems. I told them they have 3 minutes to discuss with their group which property we are going to use to solve each example. There were some great discussions going on and I overheard students using the vocabulary we just went over. In the previous years, I had students just say "it's property 4 because the angles are not across from each other." Today, I heard "we are going to use property 4 because consecutive angles are always supplementary". (insert proud teacher face here). After three minutes were up, I called on each group to tell me what property we are going to use to solve the problem and that they had to walk me through how to set the equation up. I did this for every example and it made the lesson "student-centered" since the students had total control of the classroom! My co-teacher likes to color code the angles to help students solve for missing angles. For example, he likes to color a pair of opposite angles in blue and the other pair in pink. This helps many students to determine whether they are equal because "same colors are equal" and "different colors are supplementary."

After the notes, I had students work on the following Parallelograms Maze (which they LOVED). Directions: Every student will start at problem A and solve the problem. When they solve the problem, they will take the solution and plug it into B's empty box. They will repeat this process until they are finished with all of the problems. I walk around and check students work because if they mess up on a problem, it will make their whole worksheet incorrect. By creating this worksheet, students definitely asked more questions than usual just to make sure that they are not doing a lot of work to get the whole paper wrong. I did have students write down which property they used for every problem.

Overall it was a great day! I love it when students have questions and when they use important geometry vocabulary in their conversations :) Tomorrow we have a Parallelograms Quiz and I'm very excited to see how they do. 

UPDATE TO POST: I have started making YouTube Videos with Google Form Assessments in the description if you would like to use!

Here are the resources I used today:

1) Flipbook: CLICK HERE

2) Parallelograms Maze: CLICK HERE

3) YouTube Video - Given Two Sides

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