PAYAL PATEL 3/21/14 Geometry 4 1st Pd

The students arrive in a rush and open their notebooks. They must first turn in their consent forms for the videotaping. The warm up is on the screen. The students are to find the missing sides on two different sets of similar triangles. This exercise is not a separate problem set but the foundation for todays lesson. The students are engaged and many are working cooperatively to determine the lengths. This is a timed activity, which means the students may not fool around. Patel calls her students attention to the front screen and calls on a volunteer to begin providing answers. The students are focused and eager to participate. She congratulates her students for their answers and enthusiasm. She also asks if they need a review and quickly summarizes the answers. She asks if there are any questions and reminds her students no question is too small it cannot be asked. The next time Payal draws a right triangle on the board, she needs to be careful the right angle looks more like 90 degrees rather than 75-80. As Payal moves on, she reminds her student about the previous lessons where she introduced the history of the Pythagorean Theorem. This lesson 2 days ago traced the theorem through history ending with President Garfield, which was also a recent question on Jeopardy. The students apparently really enjoyed that class. With such positive feedback Payal is more eager to introduce additional topics. As she passes out the worksheets, she tells her students to get into a comfortable position. She turns out the light telling her students to close their eyes and think about their tensions leaving their bodies. They must let their tensions go completely. They are to bring their attention to their breath and think about the breath entering and leaving the body. With exhalation, the students are to release tensions and negative feelings and inhale positivity. Most students, including the CM, are participating in this activity. All of the students have accepted this relaxation technique that takes about 3 minutes. Each practice is slightly different. The students return to cycles of normal breathing and the lights go slowly back on. The idea is to relax before beginning the next lesson. The students are directed to todays worksheet. Hopefully they will be less anxious and more eager to tackle the new challenges. It is interesting to note there is less needless chatter going on. The students are talking cooperatively to each other rather than competing for air space. As the students work on the assignment, Payal is able to go around this closet of a classroom answering individual questions. Payal asks how many students are finished. She wants them to continue on to the next two questions which will lead the students to discover the properties of right triangles. She does not want to tell them the rules but rather let her students discover the special

right triangle properties on their own. This process encourages inductive reasoning, which has been a challenge Payal is rising to meet. All corners of the room are to refocus on the screen. Payal posts the ratios on the screen and asks the students to tell her where they spy similarities. The students are quick to respond. She wants to know everything they see. Unfortunately time is Payals enemy and there is no more time. The bell rings and the students are eager to move on to the next class.