Introduction to Scale Drawings (Day 81)

The week after winter break isn't necessarily the week teachers look forward to -- especially not when it's also the first day of a major schedule change. Coming into today, I knew that many students would be confused as to the new order of their classes, and so I expected nothing less than chaos.

And yet I was looking forward to this week ever since this long-term assignment began. That's because this week marks the start of the my favorite Math 7 strand -- the geometry strand. It's the last week of this long-term, and so I knew it would be the only week that I'd get to teach geometry -- the theme of this blog.

Obviously, the math department chair, who makes the key decisions regarding pacing, chose not to make students retake the Unit 4 Test they failed at the end of the first semester. And since Unit 5 was a semester "final" that we also skipped, we move directly into Unit 6, the first geometry unit. It is based on the following standard:

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.7.G.A.1
Solve problems involving scale drawings of geometric figures, including computing actual lengths and areas from a scale drawing and reproducing a scale drawing at a different scale.

Here's what this means for this Geometry blog. First of all, I will be blogging four times this week instead of three, and all four posts will be labeled "Math 7." This is not to ignore Math 8 -- indeed, they had a Desmos activity on "One Word" that reminds me of Shelli's Yule Blog post from December 29th. (This is worth mentioning on Twitter, since Shelli and other Yule Bloggers might find it interesting.)

But the focus all this week will be on Math 7 and the geometry unit. Today is Monday, and so all students meet online. The lesson begins with a Powerpoint on scale and scale factors. Students write proportions -- and unlike some Common Core lessons, students do solve the proportions by cross-multiplying. Then they are assigned a worksheet where they must use scale to determine building dimensions using blueprints.

As expected, this lesson doesn't quite go smoothly -- but it wasn't just because of students confused about the new schedule. Even during this last week of my long-term, I'm still dependent on the regular teacher and department head to upload and set up assignments on Canvas. But unfortunately, they don't set it up properly -- in the first Math 7 class, the worksheet isn't posted correctly, and in the later class, neither the Powerpoint nor the worksheet are posted correctly. In that class, I end up sharing my screen into the Google Meet and then having the students copy from there.

Also, the time wasted hearing students say "I can't get to the slides!" mean less time for the lesson, and I find myself rushing. I believe that many students in that class are still confused where to put the numbers to set up the proportions.

I'll continue this discussion in tomorrow's post. It will be in "A Day in the Life" format due to the special reason "first in-person day of the new class schedule."