Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Circle geometry worksheets using Geometer's Sketchpad



Hi everyone. Here are four guided activity worksheets I wrote as part of a unit on circle geometry (which used to be in the Principles of Math 11 curriculum and has now migrated to a lower grade...)
Lesson 1 Chords
Lesson 2 angles
Lesson 3 tangents

Lesson 4 Cyclic Quadrilaterals

Feel free to use these in your own classes or to share them with colleagues.


I found it best to have kids work in pairs or threes at each computer, so it was actually beneficial to have only 8 to 15 computers available! (That was a good thing when I taught in a minischool that did not have a proper computer lab...) Kids learned a lot more by collaborating on these activities than by working through them individually.

I alternated these 'experiential' lessons on Sketchbook with more traditional lessons involving traditional deductive proofs of the same theorems. My interest was in exploring the idea of proof with my students. I would ask them: which was more convincing to you? Which was more certain, or more logical? Which was more memorable?

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