Activity Overview
In this activity, students use the Geoboard to determine the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangles.
Before the Activity
Start the Geoboard App and format it
See the attached PDF file for detailed instructions for this activity
Print pages 77 - 81 from the attached PDF file for your class
During the Activity
Distribute the page to the class.
Follow the Activity procedures:
Using vertical and horizontal sides, draw squares with areas of 1, 4, 9, and 25 square units
Find the length of the sides of the squares
Note that the length of sides is found by taking the square root of the area and area is found by squaring the side
Draw a rectangle to represent the pasture in the word problem and mark its diagonal
Note that the diagonal divides the rectangle into two congruent right triangles, and is called the hypotenuse
Draw a square in which the triangle's hypotenuse is the length of the square's side
Find the area of the square by surrounding it with a larger square and subtracting the four triangular corners
Calculate the area of the smaller square to be 25 square miles
If the area of the square built off of the hypotenuse is 25 square units, the diagonal is 5 miles
Draw the given triangle on the Geoboard, build a square on its hypotenuse, find the area of the square, and the measure of the triangle's hypotenuse
After the Activity
Review student results:
As a class, discuss questions that appeared to be more challenging
Re-teach concepts as necessary