Day 76: Area of Triangles

6th Grade Math Standards: Find the area of right triangles, other triangles, special quadrilaterals, and polygons by composing into rectangles or decomposing into triangles and other shapes; apply these techniques in the context of solving real-world and mathematical problems.
MA.1.a.Use the relationships among radius, diameter, and center of a circle to find its circumference and area.
MA.1.b. Solve real-world and mathematical problems involving the measurements of circles.

The Learning Objective: Find the area of a triangle

Quote of the Day:
Friend 1: Hey How are ya? 
Friend 2: Not bad. How are you?
Friend 1: Busy. Seems like I’m always behind. Too much to do, you know?
Friend 2: Oh wow, I know. I’m completely stressed, too. In fact, just last week I had to…

Maybe you’ve overheard or participated in a conversation like this recently. Think about it for a moment. This kind of discussion is predisposed to go one way: spiraling downward. If someone begins a conversation claiming to be “not bad,” “busy,” and “always busy,” how likely is he or she to spend the next few sentences talking about taking on more opportunities, thinking bigger, making his or her best better, or setting new goals? Not very.” – Jason Womack

Question from Yesterday (as always from a student): "Is it possible to find the square root of an odd number?"

Assessment: Weekly Quiz; circumventing the room as students tried to count the squares to find the base and height, fist of five, checking the homework, pepper

Agenda:

1. Jumpstart using get to 10
2. Quote & Question
3. Area of parallelogram recap & pepper
4. Area of triangle exploration
5. Area of triangle count the squares
6. Area of triangle practice
7. Weekly Quiz #12

Glass-Half Full: Many students were able to derive where the formula came from without being spoon fed the formula. I also implemented the "no formula, no credit" policy. We'll see how much damage it does.

Regrets: I think I need to modify the routine of pepper a little because the six students that are standing during that time are engaged, the students at the board are engaged, but the students at the desks are not. Perhaps I will implement a rule that if you are sitting at a desk, you can add three points to the score if you answer a question right and begin to post pepper records in the classroom.

Link of the Day: There are 440 million students under the age of 16 in Africa and most of them aren't getting a quality education. Power shortages are part of the problem.