Angle Pairs

FLASHCARDS

This past week my sophomore class was working on angle relationships.  I wanted something that went beyond the definitions because many of my kids could tell you that complementary angles add up to 90 degrees, but then have trouble turning that into an actual equation.

This was an attempt to make something that was more useable than a definition.  The kids started by cutting out the first six card fronts and attaching them to index cards.

Next we went through them card by card labeling and coloring the angles, writing the relationship in words, and then writing an equation.

After going through all of them, I gave the kids the six card backs.  They had to look at each one and decide which relationship it showed and tape it to the right card.  They needed have me or someone with the correct answers check their cards before actually taping.

Here is a kid matching up his cards

After putting the problems on, we went through the problems and discussed how to use what we knew to write and solve an equation.  Going through this took very different amounts of time in different periods of mine.

USING THE CARDS


After creating the cards, we are now using them to solve problems.  On Friday I had them work on this worksheet:

Get the whole worksheet here

Before solving anything, I had them go through the entire front of the worksheet just labeling each problem with either: complementary, supplementary, vertical, or none.  I had them take out their complementary, supplementary, and vertical cards to use as a references.  I was really impressed with how well this worked.  They looked at the problem and then compared it to their cards to help make a decision.

The first 8 problems were just naming the angles, but the rest involved solving for variables.  Even when the directions didn't say to, I said that they needed to first write down what angle pair was being shown.  This is a habit I want them to get into because often kids look at problems like this and just completely blank out on what to do.  This way it at least gives them a starting point to the problem.

This is a kid using his cards to work on the activity.

For the second part of this we'll be doing the same thing with the angles formed by parallel lines and transversals.  Before working on this, I'm going to have them create a card for consecutive interior angles.  We did a quick coloring activity on Friday that you can kinda see in the picture above.  Just an easy visual to show which angles are congruent and that the two angles will add up to 180 degrees.  The consecutive interiors card will be nice to build on this a little bit and to help for the next activity.  

Get the whole worksheet here

For any kids that had trouble classifying the angle pair being shown, I had them color in the two angles we were looking at and it really helped them to compare the example to their cards.  This activity was lengthy because I didn't want to rush it.  We created the cards over a number of days because I wanted to make sure that the kids got down all the correct information so that they can now use the cards.  I also wanted to make sure to give them the time to really think things through on their own (like matching the back of the cards and classifying and coloring angles) so I really took time on it.

I felt like they were really using the cards on Friday to solve the problems so I was happy with that. During the course of this we also went through how to set up and solve two step equations so I also liked that I was able to sneak that in and now I won't really have to go over it too much later.

Download Here 
Disclaimer (7/29/17): These aren't the exact cards you see pictured because I actually no longer use them. Instead I use the chart that is also included in the file. There are pieces of the original still in there though and it's editable so you should be able to piece together the cards if that's what you're looking for.