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 algebra 1, which will bring a unique challenge. So I've been building up a collection of engaging geometry activities that get students thinking while also being fun.  

Coming back to add this has become a VERY long post! All of my geometry materials are in this big High School Geometry Bundle. All new geometry materials will be added to the bundle. Additions are free to download.

High School Geometry Bundle

High School Geometry Activities

After starting the year reviewing integers, order of operations, and the scientific calculator functions, we'll get into geometry fundamentals. We'll start fundamentals by identifying angles, lines, rays and line segments. Students will color this angles, lines, rays, segments worksheet.

Then will match drawings, symbols and names to complete this angles, lines, rays, segments matching activity.

Sometimes, I like adding mazes or other fun little activities to student warm-ups to help get pencils into hands when students enter class. Here I added a maze to our first intro to geometry warm-up with maze. There are a bunch of online maze generators to choose from that allow you to make mazes in different shapes.

When I posted an angles, lines, rays segments coloring sheet on social media, a teacher asked if I could also make a naming angles coloring sheet. 

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.

To help organize the information given for segment addition problems, I'll put this segment addition graphic organizer into page protectors for students to use with dry erase markers. There is also a graphic organizer in the file for angle addition.

Fun Ideas for Teaching Place Value and Rounding

Whether students are rounding, comparing numbers, estimating, working with money, or multiplying by powers of 10, having a firm grasp of place value builds students' number sense and confidence in their math abilities.

Free 4-Unit Pack of Consumer Math Curriculum Warm-ups

This FREE 4-unit pack of consumer math warm-ups will get students thinking about real-world math as soon as they sit down for class. There are at least 6 warm-ups included for each curriculum unit listed below, along with answer keys:

Increasing and Decreasing Finder Tool for Graphs

Do your algebra students struggle with finding the increasing and decreasing intervals of graphs? This increasing and decreasing finder tool guides students where to look when finding the increasing and decreasing intervals.

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Students watch the graph move up and down the ruler on the side.

domain and range finder tools w/ increasing and decreasing

"These helped my algebra students so much! The directions on each finder were so helpful...especially when the graph has arrows and not endpoints." - Elizabeth Y

The increasing and decreasing tool was added to a similar domain and range finder tool that guides students where to look when finding domain and range. See the domain & range / increasing & decreasing tools here.

How to Stop Students from Second-Guessing on Math Exams

The brain is a funny thing. We've evolved these giant frontal lobes that can plan years in advance, but throw in a bit of test anxiety and we're suddenly running from a lion at dusk. When the brain detects danger, that massive frontal cortex shuts off and is just there taking up space.

If I had to estimate, every single student I have ever had in any of my special education math classes has had some level math anxiety. I have my theories as to why this is, but in this post I want to instead focus on ways to help students overcome this anxiety when taking tests so that they don't doubt their answers.  

How to stop students second-guessing their math

I asked teachers on Facebook what they do to help students with this, and got a bunch of great advice. Their advice is below. If you'd like to read the original thread, it's here.

Compound Interest Cheat Sheet

This week, the plan is to finish learning about compound interest so that we can squeeze in projectile motion next week before starting final exam review the week after. It'll be tight, but that's the goal! Hard to believe there are only a few weeks left.

We started our exponential functions unit learning how to graph exponential functions by building tables, identifying a and b given a table, and writing the equations of exponential graphs with the y-intercept and f(1) highlighted.

We then moved on to compound interest compounding annually, then compounding more often. Today students started a compound interest escape room that covers compounding annually, quarterly, monthly, and daily. The escape room also comes as self-checking digital, but we used the printable version. It's more forgiving and keeps students offline.

Today, I made students this exponential functions cheat sheet that they can use as we finish up the escape room, exponential decay, and on their upcoming quiz as an IEP accommodation.

For decay, I may also give students this friendly percents reference depending on how things go. We may just stick with (1 - r), but I'd like them to have another perspective for finding the base of decay functions.

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