And Then There Were Circles

A few weeks ago I shared with a couple of my colleagues my excitement over finishing putting together the details for the rest of our year in AP Biology. Within that week, administration came to me to ask if I would be willing to take on a math class for the last 6 weeks (+ Regents exams) of school since one of our math teachers was leaving after Spring Break. His Geometry class met for 3 periods that I was already at school for (and was not actually teaching), and only one other day for a double period.  I agreed to take it on. Fortunately, the class only has two more topics to learn before we start studying for the Common Core Regents Exam in June, and they are both fun, hands-on topics.

I met with this class for the first time this week and we jumped into circles and circle theorems. I had read a couple of math blogs about circle theorems from Mathsville and Mr Reddy Maths Blog. I also had about 15 hula hoops from when I had taught a Sunday School class and we did a weaving project. I pulled out the twine and yarn and we got to work demonstrating several of the circle theorems. Can you guess what theorem each hula hoop represents? There are several other hula hoops of theorems, but it's very hard to see the yarn in the pictures with students holding them.

I also put together some graphic organizers for my students to keep track of it all. We started with definitions and then moved onto theorems.  For theorems, they worked on adding the diagrams, I gave them the words. This made for a fun first class with this group.