Making Sense of Shapes and Sizes

Author

Texas Instruments

Alignment

Standards Alignment

Textbook Alignment

Subject Area

Math: Algebra I: Sequences and Series

Level

9-12

Activity Time

60 Minutes

TI Calculator

TI-30X IIS

Other Materials

Centimeter cubes or square tiles
Grid paper

Resource Types

Lessons

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Making Sense of Shapes and Sizes

Activity Overview

Students develop algorithms for generating and generalizing patterns related to triangle and square geometric models.

Before the Activity

See the attached PDF file for detailed instructions for this activity

Print pages 119 - 122 from the attached PDF file for your class

During the Activity

Distribute the pages to the class.

Follow the activity procedures:

Use square tiles or centimeter cubes to build geometric shapes found on the Student Activity pages

Record the area and perimeter for each shape

Notice that the cubes take on a triangular staircase shape, and that the values in the Area column represent the triangular sums of that pattern

Use these results to write an algorithm to generate the number patterns in the Area column and the Perimeter column

Alternatively, use an algebraic model to generalize the pattern in these tables

After the Activity

Students complete the Student Activity pages and answer questions.

Review student results

As a class, discuss questions that appeared to be more challenging

Re-teach concepts as necessary

Download Files

Download All Files (ZIP)

Before the Activity Files

Teacher Notes PDF

Author

Texas Instruments

Alignment

Standards Alignment

Textbook Alignment

Subject Area

Math: Algebra I: Sequences and Series

Level

9-12

Activity Time

60 Minutes

TI Calculator

TI-30X IIS

Other Materials

Centimeter cubes or square tiles
Grid paper

Resource Types

Lessons

Report an Issue

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Making Sense of Shapes and Sizes

Making Sense of Shapes and Sizes

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