Waayyy too much time and thought went into this! I have to remind myself that teaching & covering are not the same and that I have to let some things go in order to tech other content well. I’m just not going to do Law of Sines & Law of Cosines in geometry. It isn’t happening. I’m trying to be OK with this. I’m also not going to teach simplifying radicals. There. I said it.
So, here’s the plan:
We are going to start the semester with TV Space to motivate the Pythagorean theorem. I’ve asked. My students have not heard of it. I know, they should have, but they don’t know it. They are going to dominate it in a few weeks. We’re going to follow that up with Mathalicious’ Viewmongus, which, at this point, students should be able to work through pretty comfortably. I know this is a lot of Pythagorean Theorem, but I’m trying to build persistence and a culture of problem solving as the semester gets going. Then I am going to support my students writing a program in their TI-84’s to use the Pythagorean theorem given 2 coordinates (AKA distance formula). I plan to use the sheet shared by Jasmine Walker as a guide.
Right after that, I’m hitting ’em with Taco Cart. Dan & Fawn have done wonderful work. I’m so so so excited about finally getting to do Taco Cart. Yes, its the holiday break & I can’t wait for school to start to get in some serious problem solving with me being less helpful!
Then we’ll spend a day reviewing midpoint & programming in that baby to the TI’s. Next we’ll spend a class period on Pam Wilson’s distance & midpoint activity. I may make it into a scavenger hunt, as mentioned in the comments, we’ll see how ambitious I am when we get to that. Depending on how the pretest for this unit goes, I may do a 1 day activity reviewing slopes of parallel & perpendicular lines, then we are off & running with coordinate quadrilateral proofs. I’m sure I’ll throw in Illustrated Mathematics’ Is this a Rectangle? The big project for this unit will be a choice between Jasmine Walker’s quadrilateral programming project or Mathy McMatherson’s Facebook project described here & incorporating his reflective follow up here.
Then we’re hitting up some right triangle trig. I think I am going to go old school with this unit. I’ll introduce the concept using Tina Cardone’s geogebra exploration, but then I think were just going notes & practice: roundtables, problems around the room, row games. Once we’ve got it down we’ll build clinometers to measure tall stuff outside (flagpole, maybe?). That’s probably all we’ll get in in the next 6 weeks, but I intend to follow this up with this awesome trig task as soon as I can, maybe the start of the next 6 weeks. I’m like a kid in a freggin’ candy store with all of the awesomeness spewing out of the MBToS! Y’all fire me up!
Here’s the learning target tracking sheet for the next 6 weeks:
Crazy Math Teacher Lady 
Wow! Awesome stuff! Makes me wish I were starting that unit, not ending it. Thanks for sharing! If you end up doing the TI project, let know how it goes. I’m considering having students write a court room dreams about identifying shapes as one of the project options.
I love the court room drama idea! That could be an opportunity to collaborate with a drama or creative writing teacher. I’ll have to look at my students schedules and talk to their other teachers. How fun!
That looks great! It’s nice to have kids who haven’t been exposed to something (pythagorean theorem) because then you get to teach it however you want! Don’t worry, no one should be doing law of sines/cosines in geometry, and I always skip simplifying radicals (even though I feel a bit guilty about that one).
Ahhh…thanks for your feedback! It’s good to hear that my thinking as at least on the right track!