Monday, June 15, 2015

Slope Triangles

    Here is another post that has been in my drafts since March. Oh my! Thank goodness I have summer to sit down and share these with you. Enjoy:)   
    This was the first time I have taught slope triangles. Actually, and don't judge me, I've never given them any time in my curriculum. That changed this year as I decided to spend several days working with them in my Pre-Algebra 8th grade classes. 
     We started our unit with Fawn Nguyen's awesome lesson using staircases to begin our discussion of slope. I know that Fawn used this with her 6th graders but it was appropriate to use with my Pre-Algebra classes. Here is the link to Fawn's first of two posts on this activity. Fawn goes into great detail explaining the questioning and student interaction. Take time to read her posts, they are awesome. Thanks Fawn!  My students completed the worksheet in one class period. I'm hoping that next year we will spend more time with our discussions.
     I love the video that Fawn shared from the Utah Avalanche Center discussing the slope of hills and avalanches. We showed this at the beginning of class the next day.



      Next we did an interactive notebook page on counting to find slope. 
We drew slope triangles and labeled them. 



Then they did the INB page below with their partners. 
I probably should have added a vertical line on this page as well.


Followed by this activity from illuminations.
              2570-Pic-Triangle12570 triangles 22570 triangles3
     There were a few other activities that I will share in a later post.

     Of course we watched Colin Dodds Slope video. 
The kids love his songs and so do I!


     It was worth spending this amount of time on slope triangles. It gave the students an added visual for finding slope that I know many of them need. I was happy with how much the slope triangles helped my struggling students. When they would hear the words slope triangle they knew exactly what they needed to do. 
     
Click here for a copy of the documents:

4 comments:

  1. Are these activities still available? I'd love to use them in my 8th grade math class.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you for letting me know that the links were not working. I've uploaded the links again and you should be able to access the pages. Glad you are going to use these with your classes. Enjoy:)

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  2. Was the Illuminations activity a paid resource before? When I link to it now, it is making me sign in as a paid member to get the resource. Thank you for your other shared resources. I visit your blog frequently.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes it was a free resource in the past. UGH! Email me through the contact form at the right. We can talk there.

      Delete

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