In over our heads with radicals in 8th grade Algebra this week, so we took some time to review the Pythagorean Theorem.  Geometry is so beautifully concrete.  In addition to demonstrations you can do with drawings and such, here’s an example of a very cool model that my 8th graders found wonderfully entertaining.

 

As an added bonus, they all went about shouting “O, that’s very clevah!” at each other the rest of the day.

Many of the examples given by their book (Pearson Prentice Hall’s Algebra 1) used the famous 3-4-5 triangle — one of my favorite triangles, obviously — or triangles congruent to it, so that gave us an opportunity to review congruent figures and scale factors as well.  Jolly good!

 

Pythagorean Theorem
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