Day 123: Unit 9 - Circles

Whoo - a new unit! Circles might be one of my favorite topics (how many times have I already said that this year?) There's just SO MUCH you can you do with circles and I guess I'm as mystified by the perfection of the shape as the ancients were. 

In any event, to ease students back into school after spring break, today was a very simple intro discovery lesson. 

• Draw point A
• Have students agree on a common distance (pick a number between 1 and 10), and draw a new point X cm away from point A
• Repeat Y times (pick another number between 10 and 20). 
• (Amazingly, this is the step that killed everyone. You should have seen the misinterpretations)

1. What is the longest possible segment you can make connection 2 of the points you drew?
2. What is the relationship between your answer to #1 and the distance we used to start?
3. Find the perimeter of the shape by measuring the point-to-point distance at every gap and adding them up (you should have heard the groans)
4. What is the relationship between the perimeter and the longest segment?

And then I gushed about how awesome Pi is. They didn't care.