Description
What our Identifying Right Triangles lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Identifying Right Triangles teaches students all about right triangles. At the end of the lesson, students will be able to recognize right triangles as a category and identify right triangles. This lesson is for students in 4th grade.
Classroom Procedure
Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the blue box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand.
Options for Lesson
Included with this lesson is an “Options for Lesson” section that lists a number of suggestions for activities to add to the lesson or substitutions for the ones already in the lesson. Some optional additions to the lesson activity include using glue and additional supplies and having your students make a 3D drawing/model using right triangles. They can then vote for the best, most creative, and most colorful drawings. For an additional activity, you can have your students write an acrostic poem related to right triangles. You could also take your students outdoors and have them identify right triangles and right angles in nature. If you have more advanced students, you can have them research Pythagorean’s Theory and other theories related to right triangles.
Teacher Notes
The teacher notes page includes a paragraph with additional guidelines and things to think about as you begin to plan your lesson. This page also includes lines that you can use to add your own notes as you’re preparing for this lesson.
IDENTIFYING RIGHT TRIANGLES LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
Angles
The Identifying Right Triangles lesson plan includes two content pages. Angles are created by combining two rays at their endpoints. Angles range in size, and can be any size greater than 0 or less than 360 degrees. There are three main types of angles: acute angles (less than 90°), right angles (90°), and obtuse angles (greater than 90°).
We can find these different types of angles in two-dimensional figures like squares, rectangles, triangles, pentagons, and other polygons. We also call different types of triangles by the names of the three types of angles, so it’s important to learn how to recognize and identify them, starting with right triangles!
Right Triangles
We can find right triangles all over the place! The corners of sheets of paper, the place where your ceiling and walls meet, the edges of many tables and desks, and the intersections of many roads are all usually right triangles.
When a triangle has a right angle, we call that triangle a right triangle. It’s easy to create a right triangle using a right angle. When you take a right angle and add a diagonal line segment using points on each ray, you’ve create a right triangle!
If you look at an angle or triangle and notice a small square in one corner, that indicates that that angle is 90°, or a right angle. In a right triangle, the other two angles are both acute angles (less than 90°) which both measure 45°.
You can also use a right angle or triangle to help you determine whether other triangles or angles are acute or obtuse by comparing their sizes. Remember that a right triangle must include a right angle, an acute triangle must include three acute angles, and an obtuse triangle must include one obtuse angle!
IDENTIFYING RIGHT TRIANGLES LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Identifying Right Triangles lesson plan includes three worksheets: an activity worksheet, a practice worksheet, and a homework assignment. You can refer to the guide on the classroom procedure page to determine when to hand out each worksheet.
TRIANGLE PICTURE ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
For the activity worksheet, students will draw a picture using triangles. They will complete both a rough draft and final drawing.
IDENTIFYING RIGHT TRIANGLES PRACTICE WORKSHEET
The practice worksheet asks students to first tell whether five statements related to right triangles are true or false. They will then answer three questions about the lesson material and identify six triangles as right, acute, or obtuse.
X MARKS THE SPOT HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
For the homework assignment, students will look at the triangles on the worksheet and place an X inside all of the right triangles.
Worksheet Answer Keys
This lesson plan includes answer keys for the practice worksheet and the homework assignment. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.
