Kite Building Activity

Today we built kites using straws and tissue paper. This led to some interesting conversations with students. Here's one I had over and over all day.

Kid: Is this right?
Me: That's a rhombus.
Kid: So, is it right?
Me: I told you to make a kite.
Kid: What's the difference between a kite and a rhombus?
Me: You should probably look that up.

Eventually, they all figured it out. I refused to give any more instruction than, "Use these supplies and make a kite." I wanted them to figure it out for themselves, use their considerable problem solving skills. I have a good collection of kites to show for it. My favorite moment of the day: one of my biggest complainers said, "Hey, low-key, this is kind of fun."

Polygon Angle-Sum Theorem & Parallelograms

It's the beginning of a new semester here in Alabama. We are off to a bumpy start because of the extremely cold weather. We are just not prepared for 3 days in a row of temperatures below freezing! We have had 2 pipes burst at our house, and may friends and neighbors have experienced the same thing. School was delayed, students stayed home where it was warm, or came to school because they had no heat! We are ready for the weather to settle down so that we can get back to normal!

Anyway, here are the first few pages of our Geometry B Interactive Student Notebook. We started with a review of some concepts from Geometry A. 

 Here is a very quick "discovery" activity for sum of interior angles of polygons. The handouts can be downloaded for free HERE.

The next section begins our more specific focus on quadrilaterals. I originally planned for my students to draw the parallelograms (using rulers). That was terrible. For my next classes, I printed quadrilaterals for them to cut out and glue in. Their pages look much better that way.