Task: Find a reason(s) why each of these would not belong.

1 2

3 4
Anticipate different strategies students How will you record each of these
might use for solving the problem (or strategies?
how they might “see” a dot card)
#1: I will have the white board sectioned off
-you are not given or trying to find according to number, and ask the students
the hypotenuse to volunteer answers going 1-4.
-it is the only "special” right
triangle
-can use tangent to find unknown side
#2:
-only one trying to find angle
-can use inverse sin to find angle
#3:
-not given any angle (except for right
angle which is necessary) or trying to find
any angle
-could use Pythagorean Theorem to solve
#4:
-the only one that you can tell is
definitely not a “special” right triangle
right away without any calculations
-can use sin to find unknown side

What questions might you ask to fully In reflecting on this Number Talk,
understand and represent a student’s what do you want to remember, what
thinking and/or method? problem might you do next, and why?

-What is a “special” right triangle?
-How did you know you would be able to
use (insert trig function here) to find the
indicated missing value?
-How does that make it different than the
others?
This will be at the start of a new unit
reviewing trigonometry that they learned
in Algebra II, so it want to make note of
which concepts come back easier to them.
Some observations based on location of
knowns/unknowns might come from lack
of recollection of the concepts.
A problem that I might do next is to talk
about “special” right triangles and trig
functions, although students may already
have identified some of these. Then we
could go back and actually find the
indicated unknowns for each of these
problems.