My purpose statement was to "use the floor activity to develop understanding of how to use Pythagorean Theorem to find distances on a coordinate plane". After my students completed and turned in their bellwork, they joined me at the back of my room where I had taped the axes on the floor.
I used pre-planned coordinates for my students to graph. Two points created a vertical line, two created a horizontal line and two created a diagonal line. In the discussion, my students decided they could count spaces for a vertical or horizontal line, but not a diagonal. Then, I mentioned the Pythagorean Theorem and had them discuss in their groups what they remembered about it. After their discussions, we created a right triangle and they solved for the diagonal line. We did a couple other examples.
After that, they went back to their tables and used them to graph their given points and find the distance on paper between the two points. I taped their two-students tables down the middle before school, so I used that for the x-axis. The y-axis was the crack where the two tables met. The day before, I discretely made tick marks with permanent marker and labeled the axes.
I taught 6 classes, with at least 6 groups each and DID NOT TAKE A SINGLE PICTURE!!!!!! UGH!!!! So today, in anticipation for this blog post, I chose a couple examples and staged pics. I was just so wrapped up in the excitement of my students learning and my fellow teachers observing that I didn't even remember I had my phone in my pocket!
