I wanted a hands on way for students to learn the parts of a circle. Since I have small class sizes, this was not a big expense to get the supples.

• paper plates
• pipe cleaners/chenille stems
• circle stickers
• straws
• rectangle stickers
• hot glue gun

The back of the directions had a place for them to practice naming the parts of their circle as well.

My mistake was buying giant paper plates that the pipe cleaners weren't long enough for so just buy the basic cheap ones.

I've always taught special right triangle by comparing similar triangles, writing proportions, and cross-multiplying. Last year I tried this investigation for the first time that also doubled as a project with mixed results. I tried it again this year but without the project piece. And I'll be honest, this year I walked around giving some hints and last year I didn't help at all. Why? Because I felt like my class was so needy and had to start learning to be more independent. This year I didn't let them talk until they had finished the whole page front and back. Then I asked them to compare with at least two other people. That part went really well.

Then we went on to basic INB notes. Some students really took the lead in shouting out what to do. While it wasn't cross-multiplying, they were using patterns and it seemed to work.

And then...

Is it weird that y doesn’t equal something with a square root of 3? Since it’s a 30,60,90? Also why does putting it over square root of 3 work? Or is this wrong pic.twitter.com/o1yXYwmXUK

— Elissa Miller 🦄 (@misscalcul8) September 3, 2018

A student asked this question on Friday and I told him I would find out and explain Tuesday.

Which led me to this:

I used these from @MrsNewellsMath last year and my kids grasped it! https://t.co/thop7WWrmR

— Breanna Davis (@MissDavisSCSD) September 3, 2018

I really loved her materials but I had already 'investigated' the patterns and already had INB notes. What to do....

Strips to the rescue!

We made a Math Tools pocket at the beginning of the year and added calculator strips. I turned her charts into strips and we used them to practice with dry erase markers and then write in the answers.


I color coded the 'levels' that Katrina mentioned in her post.


Using the tic-tac-toe method, we decided first which column the given information goes in and then how to solve for x. This really helped them see when we need to multiply and when to divide. Once we had x then we could fill in the other two columns.

Two students figured out shortcuts to the patterns without doing the work. I explained to them that that was my goal but when I led with that in the past, everyone would get confused and so I need to teach a structure that EVERYONE can fall back on.

I felt like this really cleared things up from where we left it on Friday. Next time I teach it I will do the strips right after the investigation and then they can use the strips as a reference for the INB notes.

Thanks Katrina!

I've used this activity for the past few years, using foam circles from Dollar Tree that I labeled with sharpies and stuck up all over the room.



My ceilings are too high to reach and I felt like that always threw them off. This year I got the bright idea to cut up tissue boxes and use blank yard sale stickers.

1. What is something weird or unusual about this diagram?
2. What is something familiar about it?
3. What kind of math thing could it represent?
4. If the pink magnet was a number, what would it be?
5. What is three magnets away from the pink magnet?
6. Why are there two possible answers?
7. What is two magnets away from the star?
8. What could the magnets represent?
9. Can you have a negative distance?
10. What is the definition of absolute value?

This is Skill #1 in geometry for me and we can all agree that it's super important and full of so many little details. Over the years I have come up with so many ideas to tackle this skill with and I still don't really feel successful.

One of my favorite activities is what I originally called my hands-on naming review. I made segments and arrows out of pieces of pipe cleaner and little fuzzy balls and cut letters written on construction paper.

This year I tried the same activity with play dough and letters I cut out from my Silhouette Cameo. The students really enjoyed it but it took much longer for them to roll up the play dough and make all the pieces. I felt like they weren't really paying attention to the symbols or notation and it was like pulling teeth to get them to refer back to their notes.

So I thought I would share what I did and see if you have any feedback. I need a better flow and to shorten up how much time I spend but hopefully in a more efficient way.

First I did blind sketch; students describe a drawing to the other person and they draw it without seeing it.




We made a list of all the vocabulary words they used while describing the pictures.


Then I had them sort this cut up answer key from a graphic organizer.


And some play dough pictures:



Next I plan to do this worksheet activity with the tissue box model below.




I thought I would follow up with a Kahoot and another worksheet that I don't have a copy of.

I've also used this in the past:





What am I missing?

What am I not doing enough of?

What is the magic key to unlocking the unicorn dust of points, lines, and planes?

Currently reading Mathematical Mindsets by Jo Boaler and continuously stewing over some geometry problems I 'taught' last year.

I need your help.

I did numerous examples with students and students did numerous examples with each other. But I don't know that I actually taught them how to problem solve. To me, these type of problems are very intuitive. How do I make students feel that way?

I didn't give students anything to figure out. I did an example for them, then asked students to do an identical example with different numbers. I didn't ask students to notice or wonder anything. I didn't ask students to think about any patterns.

This has literally bothered me for over two months now. When I would 'help' students and ask them if they had checked their notebook, more than one told me "My notebook doesn't help me." Looking at worked examples was not helpful because I didn't give them anything to make meaning out of. There was nothing to help them do the problems.

Problem Type 1: The Rectangle

For the first time, in Geometry I taught a lesson about proving quadrilaterals on the coordinate plane are parallelograms.

We used three methods: slope, distance formula, and a combination of slope and distance formula. We never actually used a coordinate plane. I had students sketch the parallelogram and label the vertices in the order of the given ordered pairs.

I want to point out here that it's important to explain how to label quadrilaterals because for triangles, the order doesn't really matter. Now it does, and mixing up the letters can change a side to a diagonal and really throw them off.

Then I asked them, what two sides should be parallel or congruent to form a true parallelogram? This gave them a starting point to set up there problems and solve.

To practice, I made my go-to Pong powerpoint (see: all the pongs). It's not awesome because the answers are just yes and no and don't have worked out solutions. But considering that I could find nothing else on this topic, it's better than nothing, Literally.



My original thought was a Desmos activity but I couldn't figure anything out. I think seeing the ordered pairs on the coordinate plane would lead students to just guess yes or no based on it's looks and lose all the motivation to actually work the problem out.

Any ideas?

This lesson comes straight up stolen from @pamjwilson. I used it last year for the first time as a full class period lesson. I used it again this year as an intro into properties of quadrilaterals.

She explains it way better than me so you can go read it. Seriously. Go. But I can share some photos from my class and the INB pages we did last year.

This is based off of an activity called The Kite Task but I couldn't find any more information on it other than what Pam posted about.


Here's the literal kite shape. The green and blue 'braces' are two different lengths. Each student gets a combination of three pieces so that they can build with congruent diagonals and without. A gold brad or fastener is used to hold them together and then they trace. Last year we used legal sized pink paper and this year they literally drew on the desk (with dry erase markers).

Next year I'm thinking chart paper and making them go to the board and switch writers each time so that there is more participation. Maybe even a competition to see which group can get the most unique combinations?






Last year we did an entire set of INB pages just on diagonals. This year I incorporated it with our quadrilateral properties pages. Here are pictures of both.

Pg 59-60 You might have seen this RHP on Pinterest which I modeled it after and tried to use the graphic organizer on the LHP to reinforce things we drew. I did not implement this well because students copied it without discussion. For some reason, I thought they would look back and get all this meaning from it when we didn't spend any time creating any meaning. =(