Pythagorean Theorem

Pythagorean Theorem

I enjoy teaching this math concept. I taught it a tad bit different this year. I used a few cheesy videos to catch the students attention. They really love the cheesy videos. The cheesier the better.

We used the following videos: (They are well...brutal but my students love to joke about them)

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R8b4NelWN4
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqjWL230Ep4
3.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaj0XcLtN5c

The last one was the connection into our lesson.
 
After we discussed it and created our anchor chart, it was time to prove if this theory actually worked.

Middle school students love to prove things wrong. I provided them with colour tiles, a ruler, large graph/chart paper and my cheery smile.

The students were given a chart that they would fill out with numbers of their choice. They constructed the squares on the legs using the little multicoloured squares. Without using a calculator they then moved the squares from both of the legs to the hypotenuse. They discovered that each and every time the theory worked. They also discovered that a decimal meant that they would have to cut one of the multicoloured tiles. Since that was not an option they free handed in (with a ruler) what the square on the hypotenuse looked like.

Here are some examples of the students working on the graph paper.

Using colour tiles is so much fun!

This was a great introductory activity for the students to explore the theorem. Tomorrow we will explore deeper how to solve when we already know the length of the hypotenuse and create our foldable and note.