The Oh-so Important Pythagoras

Recently my 8th graders finished up a study of the Pythgaorean theorem.  I just thought I'd highlight some of our favorite parts of our study.

First, we did an activity to help them discover how the sum of the legs squared equals the hypotenuse squared.  The activity came from Hands-On Standards Grades 7-8.  Our county has one set of the book and manipulatives for the middle school teachers to share, and it is wonderful!  You can tell my students love getting their hands on the math.  This activity uses one-inch squares and angel-legs (my favorite for all the things you can do with them).

After a few days of practice using the Pythagorean Theorem, I proposed what I call "the Jerry question".  They're always asking me "when am I ever going to use this", and when I saw the State Farm commercial about Jerry driving his car up a pole.

I asked my students, what if you were the insurance adjuster that gets called out to this claim?  How are you going to write in the report how high up the pole that Jerry has driven his car?  You wouldn't very well want to measure that distance!  You could measure how far away from the base of the pole that the end of the car is, then you could look up to length of the car to use as the hypotenuse, and wallah!  The Pythagorean Theorem would work like a charm!  We just used estimation, based on Jerry's height, but they got the idea.

And just for fun, here are some of their favorite Pythagorean Theorem comics:

Lucky Numbers

I took a picture of the make-up work board in action.

It has been one of my best ideas! 

Tackling Make Up Work

This is my first step into the world of blogging.  My colleagues want me to share some of the ideas I'm using in my classroom, so that's what I'll be doing here.  Don't worry there won't be a shortage of hilarious classroom stories (I teach middle school, so there's not a shortage there). 

So here's my first idea...

To make sure that my students get their make-up assignments, I write their name on the worksheet or on a piece of paper with the assignment written on it and place it on the board.  In previous years I have either had a bulletin board or a magnetic dry erase board, but in the room I'm in this year, I have neither!  I (and several of my students) have gotten sick of their being tape all over the dry erase board, so I made a clip board using a piece of hobby balsa wood that I found at a craft store.  I painted the balsa wood black and glued some chip-board letters spelling out "make up work" on it.  I added glitter to some  wooden clothespins and glued them to the balsa wood with wood glue.  I attached my make up work board to the front of the room with command adhesives strips.

I'll take a picture tomorrow of it hanging up in my room, but for now here's one so you can get the idea.

It was a big hit today with my students! 

I also have a problems with students not returning pencils they borrow, and I'm just not all about having kids walking around my room barefoot (because they gave me their shoe in exchange for a pencil), so I made a pencil board too. 

Maybe it will work... I'm going to try it out tomorrow.