Day 78: Formula Application

6th Grade Math Standards: 6.G.1 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

Objective: Find the missing side or height of a triangle, rectangle, and parallelogram given the area and another dimension; correctly input the dimensions of a triangle and parallelogram; find the area of a polygon shaped garden while not including a portion that is also a polygon; determine how the area is changed when both dimensions are doubled

Agenda:

1. Open Middle Pocket Change 
2. QSSQ 
3. Review Triangle HW and Pepper
4. Exit Ticket: If the base of a triangle is 4 yards and the height is 5 yards, what is the area of the triangle in square feet? 
5. Stations. Missing side, find the area or perimeter, weekly quiz 14, what formula and what are the proper numbers to substitute, and determine what happens to the area when the base and height of a rectangle are doubled 

Assessment: Exit Ticket; homework check; finding the missing side

Glass Half-Full: Stations was effective use of group work and getting students to try problems that have multiple steps and multiple layers of thinking. I stayed at the group that needed to find what formula to use and what numbers to use with that formula. No matter how many times I say, "The base meets the height at a right angle," students still need to apply this concept and fail at it in my presence to recognize how to do these problems. I also noticed students dividing the parallelogram by two because they were in the habit of using the triangle formula.

Regrets: I took too long going over the homework and not enough time administering the exit ticket. Going over the homework was too much of me talking. Students took a back seat and did not have to think. The exit ticket involved thinking and in almost the case of every student, it was not a problem that could be solved without my help. If students were paying attention, they would have been fine, but what student pays attention? I'm not complaining. I'm being realistic. I need to give students more opportunities to work things out and fail at them. That's when I'm at my best. Not when I'm telling them exactly what needs to get done.