Snow Day #3 - This will get me completely caught up!

While three consecutive snow days the week before high school final exams is not ideal, it has allowed me to get back on track with my pre-algebra plans.  This will be a good investment of time when I (hopefully) teach this material next year.

Tuesday, January 6
1) Warm-up 
note: I decided to toss in a tough problem that is above the level of problems these kids would be ready for by asking them to find the area of an equilateral triangle w/o giving them the height. First, they didn't even blink.  There was some good discussion in many groups and approximately 80% of the students had no difficulty solving it.  The rest of the students had forgotten the necessity of the the height perpendicular to the base.  While going over this problem, one student exclaimed, "wow, the Pythagorean Theorem sure does come in handy."  

Andrew was excited to explain how he found the area to the class:

2) Complete ISN pages for volume
3) Practice finding volumes, including expectations for showing the formula, and all steps for each problem.
4) Assignment: Complete the backside of the handout

Monday, January 5


1) Warm-up: Finding area and perimeter of basic shapes

2) ISN, pages 28 - 29, finding the volume of 3D shapes with two bases, one base and no bases.