A Geometry Explanation Idea

Today will likely be a two post day after too long of a layoff from this space. It’s funny, I know that this writing relaxes me and lets my brain breathe in important ways. However, I am too prone to let busy-ness in my life prevent me from taking advantage of that.

In Geometry we are examining relationships between angles and arcs. You know the drill, right? Central angles = intercepted arc measure. Inscribed angles are equal to half of the measure of their intercepted arc. Interior angles (other than those at the center) are equal to half of the sum of their intercepted arcs. Exterior angles equal half of the difference of their intercepted arcs. As I am explaining this yesterday in class I am emphasizing this half relationship over and over but I just kind of gloss over the fact that the central angle does not fit this pattern. I have gone through this explanation in the past but I do not think I was as explicit about the developing pattern with the one half scale factor in the past. So this morning I was thinking about how I can best help my students focus on this detail. I was motivated, in part, by a lovely blog post by Michael Pershan (@mpershan) which, in part, is about managing the processing load of our students. I was struck when reading by the fact that I was asking my students to juggle seemingly different rules yesterday. So I had this idea and it probably is not revolutionary in any way. But I think I want to simply say that central angles are interior angles. They happen to be interior angles that form two congruent arcs. This way I can ask my students to think about the one half scale factor for every angle/arc question that they think about.

Does anyone else out there do this? Do you agree with this idea? Do you think that there is a downside here that I am not seeing yet? I’d love to hear some thoughts in the comments or you can find me over on twitter @mrdardy