Over the last few weeks, I've been making some new geometry activities to get ready for my new teaching assignment in the fall. It has been a while since I've taught high school geometry, and the students I will be teaching will need a lot of support. My students take geometry before they take algebra 1, which will bring a unique challenge. So I've been building up a collection of engaging geometry activities for students that will support their learning while also being fun.
High School Geometry Activities
After starting the year reviewing integers, order of operations, scientific calculator basics and writing algebraic expressions, we'll get into geometry fundamentals. We'll start fundamentals by identifying angles, lines, rays and line segments.
After notes, students will complete a matching activity for identifying angles, lines, rays and line segments, then this angles, lines, rays and segments coloring worksheet.
When I posted that coloring activity on Facebook, a teacher mentioned his students having trouble naming angles. So I made this naming angles coloring worksheet.
After naming angles, we'll move into writing congruency statements. We'll focus on writing congruent angles and line segments statements during this unit and complete this congruency statements 2 truths and a lie.
Then we'll get into solving for the lengths of line segments, and I know that students will need a lot of support solving equations. My students next year will be freshmen in small group special education. We call the class applied geometry, and they will be taking it before taking high school algebra. I have used this solving equations flowchart most of my years teaching to support students solving equations.
I love 2 truths and a lie activities because of how they focus students on identifying mistakes. After we practice solving line segment equations in our notes, students will complete this line segment addition 2 truths and a lie. On each card there are 3 statements. Students figure out the error (the lie) then fix it on their answer sheet.
If students seem to need a refresher on identifying angles by measurement, I'll give them this classifying angles coloring worksheet activity.
Task cards are nice for chunking material to make assignments less overwhelming for students. When I taught geometry in the past, students completed this midpoints, angle bisectors and angle sums activity. There are just 4 cards with multiple questions, so students can focus on one skill at a time.
Next, we'll get into supplementary, complementary and vertical angles notes, then practice identifying angle pair relationships and solving for angle measurements.
To help students remember which angle pair is which, they'll color this free angle pairs reference for their notebooks.
Students really like these escape rooms, so to practice solving for the measures of these angle pairs, I'll give them the printable version of this angle pairs relationship escape room. The puzzles get harder as the activity progresses, so every student should be able to complete at least a few of the puzzles for practice.
For more complex angle pair equations, I also have this complementary, supplementary and vertical angles 2 truths and a lie. My students are going to keep separate warm-up notebooks this year, so I might give individual cards as warm-ups for their notebooks. I like spending extra time on warm-ups (20 minutes) because it breaks up the time and reviews important material from the previous class.
This will finish up our fundamentals unit, after which we'll move into coordinate geometry. Hopefully there will be some board room for my large magnetic coordinate plane because I already know students will struggle with plotting coordinates. I'm going to present coordinates as (time, height) or (time, amount) so that the x and y values feel different from each other.
Students will be introduced to the Pythagorean Theorem in the coordinate plane by first identifying each right triangle's vertex coordinates, then counting to find leg lengths, then using the Pythagorean Theorem to calculate hypotenuse lengths.
We might not get to this distance in the coordinate plane activity, but after posting the Pythagorean Theorem in the coordinate plane activity, teachers on Facebook asked for a "tilted" legs version. In this version, none of the triangle legs are aligned vertically or horizontally.
We'll then move on to this Pythagorean Theorem escape room, a 2 truths and a lie error analysis, or both depending on how they're doing.
Next up is calculating missing midpoints and endpoints, and I remember students struggling with this from the last time I taught geometry. We'll start with finding the midpoints and missing endpoints of horizontal and vertical segments, then move to diagonal segments. As an intro activity, I'm going to give students this hands-on endpoints and midpoints worksheet. Students will use their right triangle to measure the line segments then fill in each table. There's a 4-question exit ticket at the end.
After coordinate geometry, our curriculum moves into area and perimeter, which surprised me a bit but makes sense to refresh students' memories of the formulas. I made this area formulas reference sheet to go along with an area stations lab. There are written directions on the sheet for finding the area of each shape for students who are intimidated by the formulas.
Just to make sure everyone remembers their quadrilaterals, students will complete this quick classifying quadrilaterals coloring worksheet.
Then students will begin working on the area stations lab, where they'll measure the shapes before finding area to connect back to this skill. After finding area, students calculate the cost to paint each shape. They'll find the area of a square, rectangle, triangle, circle, parallelogram, rhombus and trapezoid. There's also a Google Slides intro presentation.
Next students will find both area and perimeter, both on and off the unit grid. I made a couple versions of these area and perimeter worksheets with diagonal lengths labeled and not labeled. If students are comfortable with the Pythagorean Theorem, I'll give them the version without the diagonal lengths labeled. All of the diagonal lengths stem from Pythagorean triples.
I still have a lot to make to be ready for teaching this class next year. All of my geometry activities are in this high school geometry activities bundle, and all new geometry activities will be added in there, too.
