What's Going On? January 30th through February 3rd

Unit 7: Similarity


This week we will continue our study on our similarity.  We will begin the week with a short formative assessment to check to make sure that we have a firm understanding of the basics.  Remember, we know that two polygons are similar if all of the corresponding angles are congruent and all of the corresponding sides are proportional.


We also learned about triangle similarity shortcuts.  These include SSS Similarity, SAS Similarity, and AA Similarity.  We can use our knowledge of a relationship that exists between figures in order to solve for unknown measurements.



This week we will explore the relationships that exist within triangles.  We will learn about two different corollaries that will allow us to solve for missing measurements within right triangles.   We will also explore proportions that exist within triangles that have parallel bases.

We will finish up the week by exploring similarity transformations.  We will learn about dilations (changes in sizes) and apply them on the coordinate plane.

What's Going On? January 9th through January 13th

Semester Exam Review Presentations

Groups have been hard at work this past week putting together a "one stop shopping" document that contains all of the important information, formulas and worked-out sample problems associated with their chosen topic that we learned about during 1st semester.  I am also excited to see the activities that students have been designing to allow the rest of the class to practice their skills!

This week, groups will have 15 minutes to present their activity.  During this time, we will be playing review games such as "Kahoot", "Space Race", "Castle Attack" and "Jeopardy" in order to refresh our memories of all of the content we have learned about during the first half of the school year.  Groups should submit all of their materials by Monday, January 9th so that I can look over things to make sure that our activities are as helpful and accurate as possible.

Exam Week

During January 18th-January 20th, Waukesha North will have a different schedule.  We will be holding 2-3 exams per day in which students can show how much they have learned.  Please note that each morning students can get some extra help or just find a quiet place to study from 7:35-9:30 each day.  The first exam begins at 9:30 and late students will not be permitted to enter an exam room.  In other words, DON'T BE LATE!  

Please make sure that you have taken care of all responsibilities as a student prior to coming into the exam.  In order to successfully pass Honors Geometry, students must attempt every summative assessment and cannot have a grade of "IE" in two or more "I can" statements.  

I would be more than happy to work with any and all students leading up to exam time.  Please feel free to come in to get some extra help!

Happy Studying!

What's Going On? January 3rd through January 6th

Semester Review Projects

The semester is winding down so it is time to start thinking about our semester exam.  In order to prepare for this, students will break up into groups this week and choose a topic in which to become our "class experts".  Each group will be responsible for summarizing the important information for their topic, providing a minimum of 8 worked out sample problems, and coming up with a 15 minute review activity.  This week, students will have our three class days to work together to organize their content and design their activity.  Next week, different groups will "present" their activity to the class in order to review their content.  The presentation could be a game, a series of stations, a Kahoot quiz game, or something original.

All of this is done to best prepare students for success during our semester exam.  Here is our exam schedule:

What's Going On? December 19th through December 22nd

Class Kick Session: Sunday, December 18th from 1pm-2pm
In preparation for Monday's Unit 6 Summative Assessment on Polygons and Quadrilaterals, I will be offering a Class Kick session where students can get some extra help on our review assignment.  After taking a poll of students, the majority of the vast majority of students voted to hold our session on Sunday, December 18th from 1pm-2pm.  The class code is KWP 3OF.  Even if you cannot join our official session, I encourage students to still use the Class Kick app as there are embedded videos explaining each problem.  Also, if students get stuck, have a question, or need me to check a question they can "raise a hand" or ask me to "please check" and I can leave feedback.  I will do my best to check in with Class Kick a few times over the weekend.  Please also note that the answer key for our review assignment is posted on BlackBoard.  Happy studying!

School Schedule for the Week
Since this is a four day week leading up to our winter break, our schedule will look a little different.  We will not run a traditional "Monday Schedule".  Instead, we will run our typical "Tuesday schedule" on Monday, our "Wednesday schedule" on Tuesday, our "Thursday schedule" on Wednesday and our "Friday schedule" on Thursday.  We will also have a modified schedule on Thursday with a pep assembly at the end of the day.

Honors Geometry Schedule for the Week

We will start the week by completing our Unit 6 Summative Assessment on Polygons and Quadrilaterals.  This assessment will cover our 3c learning target on solving for missing measurements and our 2c learning target on proving theorems about quadrilaterals.  

I will not be in class on Tuesday, but on this day students will spend some time reviewing how to write equations of lines.  This is a topic that students have struggled with in the past and it is definitely something students will need to know as they progress on to Honors Algebra 2 and future math classes.  On our last day of class for the week, we will go through our unit 6 summative assessment results and review any problems with which students continue to struggle.

Winter Break

Winter break is Friday, December 23rd through January 2nd.  School will resume on Tuesday, January 3rd.  I hope everyone enjoys this break and has time to relax and spend time with family and friends!  Stay warm!

What's Going On? December 12th through 16th

Unit 6: Polygons and Quadrilateral

This week we will spend some more time working with the concepts we learned throughout our polygons and quadrilaterals unit.  On Monday, students will work in small groups to create videos with Explain Everything in order to create a class library of how to solve problems based on different shape characteristics.

On Tuesday and Wednesday of the week, students will work on our "Polygons and Quadrilaterals Detectives In-Training" project.  On Tuesday, students will work in small groups to choose four quadrilaterals. Students will need to determine the coordinates of their vertices, making sure to work within the constraints of the project.  On Wednesday, students will switch their quadrilaterals with another group.  The students will use their detective skills to classify the quadrilateral based on the properties graphed.

On the last day of class for the week, students will complete our review assignment in order to prepare for our summative assessment on Monday, December 19th.  Any students who are interested in retaking our unit 5 summative assessment will need to have this completed by December 16th.  Please see me if you have any questions!

What's Going On? December 5th through December 9th

Continuing with Unit 6: Polygons and Quadrilaterals

This week we will continue our study of unit 6 and we will continue our focus on quadrilaterals.  On Monday I will not be in class (I will be working with the yearbook club picture day), so students will watch the Kites and Trapezoids video to guide through the notes and then will have the rest of the class period to work on our homework assignment.  On Tuesday we will go through any questions that students had from Monday's video, we will review our properties of polygons and quadrilaterals, and do a formal formative check-in on how the unit is going so far.  We will finish up the week by looking at quadrilaterals in the coordinate plane (think: graph) and how to formalize a proof of quadrilaterals in the coordinate plane.

Interested in Computer Science? Try An Hour of Code!

December 5th through 9th is Computer Science Education Week and people all around the country and world are participating in the "Hour of Code".  Tens of millions of people in over 180 countries have participated in an "Hour of Code" event.  North will be hosting an "Hour of Code" event on Thursday, December 8th after school from 3:15-4:15 in computer lab 300.  If you would like to learn a little bit more about computer programming, please join us!  Please see me if you have any questions.

What's Going On? November 28th through December 2nd

Unit 6: Polygons and Quadrilaterals

This week we will be starting our sixth unit on polygons and quadrilaterals.  We will begin the week talking about interior angles and exterior angles.  Students will use the formula 180(n-2) to find the sum of the interior angles of a polygon, where n represents the number of sides in the polygon.  We will also learn that one set of exterior angles of a polygon will always add to 360°.

Later in the week we will focus on quadrilaterals.  We will learn about parallelograms, apply our knowledge of parallelograms to a formal two-column proof to show that a quadrilateral is a parallelogram, and we will learn about the characteristics of special parallelograms.