Friday Fave for September 14

The fave is fond of triangles, and after playing with this week’s activity your students probably will be too.

This week’s fave—Exploring Triangle Area with Geoboards—is newly released and consists of a few warm up screens and a Challenge Creator. This Challenge Creator is a doozy.

How many triangles are possible on a 5-peg by 5-peg geoboard? And how many different values for the area are possible? Who knows? But whatever the number, it’s great enough to allow for a lot of creative triangle building.

Maybe you build a tricky triangle and think to yourself, “No one will be able to reproduce this one!”

But it turns reproducing your triangle isn’t the challenge; building a triangle with the same area as yours is. Indeed, odds are that your classmates will solve that challenge with a variety of triangles.

Along the way, you’ll wonder about the greatest possible area (are you sure it’s 8 square units? How do you know?), the smallest possible area (Are you sure it’s half of a square unit?), and what areas are possible in between?

The focus on student-created challenges with plenty of opportunity for creativity—that makes Exploring Triangle Area with Geoboards this week’s Friday Fave.