What's Going On? February 27th through March 3rd

Schedule for the Week

The Juniors will be completing the ACT on Tuesday.  In order to allow juniors a serious testing environment for this important test,  the rest of the students will not have school on Tuesday, February 28th.  Here is our school schedule for the week:

Finishing Up Unit 8: Triangles

This week we will be finishing up our 8th unit on triangles.  We will spend our Monday and Wednesday classes reviewing for the summative and take the summative on our last day of class for the week (1st hour will take this on Thursday and 2nd hour will take this on Friday).

The summative will cover two different learning targets:

• 3d: I can solve for missing measurements in a right triangle
• In this section, students will need to know how to apply special right triangle patterns and SOH CAH TOA.
• 3h: I can solve for missing measurements in non-right triangles
• In this section, students will need to know how to apply the law of sines, law of cosines, and solve for the area of a triangle using trigonometry.  All formulas will be provided for this target.

If you have trouble, please see me.  I am available each day at 7am and after school by appointment.

What's Going On? February 20th through February 24th

Unit 8: Trigonometry

This week we will take a look at relationships that exist within triangles in terms of their side lengths and angle measurements.  We will start off the week by applying our right triangle trigonometry ratios in order to solve real-world problems.

Then, we will move on to non-right triangle trigonometry.  We will explore the law of sines and law of cosines in order to solve for missing measurements in any triangle.

What's Going On? February 13th through February 17th

Unit 8: Triangles

This week we will continue our study of right triangles.  Last week we talked about the Pythagorean Theorem and how we can make comparisons of triangle side lengths in order to determine if a triangle is acute, right or obtuse.

We will start off this week by examining some "special right triangles", namely an isosceles right triangle and a 30-60-90 triangle.  There are special relationships that exist within these figures that allow us to figure out the length of all sides of the triangle if we only know one side length.

On Wednesday's class, we will check in with a short formative assessment to make sure that we have a firm understanding of the Pythagorean Theorem and Special Right Triangles before we move on to some right triangle trigonometry.  We will use right triangle trigonometry (SOH CAH TOA) to solve for missing side lengths and missing angle measurements in a right triangle.  

For this unit, students need to have a scientific calculator (one with sin, cos, and tan buttons).  I would recommend something like a TI-30X because the order in which students press the buttons on the calculator matches up with the way we write our trigonometry equations.

What's Going On? February 6th through February 10th

Finishing Up Unit 7: Similarity

This week we will be finishing up our unit on similarity.  We will spend Monday's class talking about self-similarity and fractals.  Students will learn some self-similarity vocabulary and create some fractals, such as the Sierpinski Triangle.

We will then spend some time reviewing for our summative assessment, which will take place on Wednesday.  This summative will include three learning targets:

• 1f: I can prove the similarity of two geometric figures.
• 1g:  I can prove theorems about similar triangles and their properties.
• 2d: I can verify and justify properties of dilations.

After our summative assessment, we will move on to unit 8 on right triangles. We will study right triangle trigonometry and non-right triangle trigonometry, including the Law of Sines and Law of Cosines. We will start this unit of study by reviewing the Pythagorean Theorem and its converse.