Too long ago I started a Geometry post by suggesting that I might have a two post day in me. Needless to say, it did not unfold that way and some combination of malaise, exhaustion, and the irresistible momentum of the end of the year has kept me away from this place of peace and comfort for some time now.
I want to share something from our Geometry class this year that was largely motivated by the work of Sam Shah (@samjshah) and his colleague Brendan Kinnell (@bmk2k)
At TMC Sam and Brendan shared boatloads of ideas and docs that they had created for their Geometry class and I am still in the process of digesting them. One that jumped out to me immediately was a document that they called The Platonic Book of Triangles that they were kind enough to share and to allow me to share in this space. Sam wrote about their process here and here.
What I did this year was try to de-emphasize naming the trig functions and just concentrate on the inherent similarities tying together right triangles as a lead in to discussing the inherent similarities relating all regular polygons and circles. Part out of a whole has become a mantra in my class these days. So, what I did was I went to a local copy shop and had them print out a class set of bound copies of the above referenced book of triangles. My students are referring to it as the magic book of numbers. We reference it regularly to set up proportions to solve right triangles. I had the book laid out so that each page had complementary angles on either side. So the students recognized – with a little prompting – that the side lengths on the triangle with the 38 degree angle marked matched up with the side lengths on the triangle with the 52 degree angle marked. I have been SO happy with how they have taken to this reference. In a way it reminds me of the trig tables I used to look up in the back of my book but this has a couple of major advantages. First, it is far more visual and helps the students orient themselves. Second, it does not rely on memorization of a mnemonic about the definitions of the cosine, the sine, or the tangent of an acute angle in a right triangle. I have been careful when I do use those terms to say as clearly as I can that for now they do not want to talk about these functions for anything other than acute angles in a right triangle. There is a whole world of trig excitement waiting for them after their experience in our Geometry class is a dusty memory.
From this conversation about solving triangles and using this to lead into explorations of regular polygons I wanted to make sure to introduce the idea of radian measures to my young charges. I came up with what seemed like a clever idea. It was a chilly, drippy day here in NE PA so I called up the weather bug applet on my laptop. However, what I did before class was I changed its unit of measure to celsius rather than fahrenheit. A student mentioned that it was unpleasant outside – with a little prompting – so I called up my weather bug and expressed surprise that it was only 13 degrees outside. Students quickly pointed out that this was simply a different way to measure the same thing, that there is a way to jump from one representation to the other. Aha, the hook was baited! I then launched into a pretty unexciting, standard representation tying together radians and degrees, relying on my mantra of part out of a whole over and over again. I am not fully convinced that they are buying in and there is evidence that many of my students seem to think that attaching pi to a degree measure is simply some sort of stunt. I am also seeing evidence that simplifying fractions, especially those where the numerator is already a fraction, is a serious challenge to too many of my students. However, what I am convinced of at this point is that a seed has been planted that has a better chance of blooming in precalculus than for those students who did not see the concept of a radian presented to them before. We have our unit test on Monday and I hope not to be disappointed.