Monday, February 25, 2013

Day 101: Unit 7 - Quadrilaterals

Well, it finally happened. Last summer, when I was writing this new curriculum, I got overviews of how to sequence the first 6 units done, figuring I'd just finish the rest when I had time (xmas break, mid winter break, etc). Did I? Of course not. So I had to spend the weekend prepping Unit 7 and thinking about what I wanted to do when and how. 

Keeping with my theme of building up from specific ideas into more general ones, we spent the day reviewing properties we knew about rectangles (from Unit 6) and I reminded everyone that we developed those properties by first starting with squares (from Unit 3). Now we're going to alter the rectangle, create a new shape, and test to see what still holds true. 

From here, we were able to show that the opposite sides are still parallel, which gives us our definition (and name). We then tested things like congruent opposite sides (distance formula), and 90 angles at the vertices (slope), as well as perpendicular diagonals, congruent diagonals, and bisecting diagonals. Tomorrow we'll wrap up the discussion, transition quickly into the rhombus, show how all these sets of quadrilaterals can be related and start the practice. 

No comments:

Post a Comment