Back To School: Triangles and Risks

If you do not yet know about the ongoing teaching cycle that my colleague and I are doing, it's awesome. It's intense. And it's exhausting. I'm going to keep this short because, well, I'm tiiiiiiired.

Today, I had the opportunity to teach an Integrated Math I class, made up of freshmen, and we worked on triangle congruence theorems. If you don't remember them, good on you. If you do remember them, like me, it probably isn't a good memory.

So, to spice things up quite a bit, I recruited the help of Elissa, Kate, Bob, and Steve.

The links:
Elissa's post: https://t.co/TYpeGFr8qg
Elissa's handout: https://t.co/xwkW1McdKl
Kate's follow-up handout: https://t.co/oTIeafeRyE

And a giant hug to all of you who share your work so I can be better. Now excuse me, I have to find protractors and paper.

— John Stevens (@Jstevens009) February 23, 2018

The regular classroom teacher gave me full reign of the class for the day, which allowed me to take a bigger risk than normal. No stipulations, no requests, just come in do my thing. YES! Here's the full lesson prep.

We started off with a WODB.

I had each student recreate the shapes in their notebook so they had something to refer back to, then write down at least one reason why each shape didn't belong to the group. The whole purpose of this was to get students' minds around shapes and what makes them similar and different. Rather than diving right into congruence, this was a more conversational option and it worked out pretty well.

From there, we took some educated guesses on whether we thought a certain description would create congruent triangles, followed up with actually creating them. Fun times here.

The hardest part that I didn't foresee was the creation of angles. I forgot that students didn't really know how to use a protractor, so that was an issue that first period had to endure. Sorry about that, first period, but you should know by now that you're always the trial class. Thanks for hanging in there.

​Once the triangles were created, students went around and taped their products onto the appropriate poster, then reflected on whether or not the description would merit a congruent set of triangles.

One thing that struck me was how hard it was to keep going throughout the entire day. The teacher doesn't have a prep period, so it is GO GO GO GO (lunch) GO GO... crash. Sure my teaching muscles are weak, and sure I'm not used to it. However, that prep period that teachers get is something that needs to be appreciated and respected. For the teachers who take pride in it, the prep is a time to re-hash a lesson that needs tinkering (they all do, by the way), use the restroom, relax a little, think about tomorrow's lesson, and collect thoughts. If you don't have any time to do this, can you really give your best every day for 182 days? The teacher I had the opportunity to work with today seems to handle it well, but I would be a complete wreck.

The overall feel from the lesson is that I took a big risk by asking a group of new students to talk, work together, go around the room, and trust me. Looking back on it, I think it worked really well. 

​Oh, and I also had the chance to witness yet another skill that so many teachers have mastered, but never took a college course on... fixing those damned backpack zippers.

So I need to ask you, the person who made it through this post:

How do you balance the days where you take big risks and succeed with the days you take a big risk and it flops?

Happy "Big Risk" Fishing