Applications of Pythagoras

By | 24th April 2019

Download the lesson here.

I find telling pupils the Pythagoras rules and then getting them to solve ‘problems’ isn’t enough. Often, the unstructured problem solving can be overwhelming for students.

Opinions vary. You might think that I’ve structured this waaay too much, and removed too much thinking from the students.

It would be interesting to hear people’s point of view on this.

Starts with a ‘do Pythagoras but with a little context’ and leads into a question that’s a little more unstructured.

Moves onto using Pythagoras to find the area of a triangle.

Maybe I’m over explaining things, but in the past I have not made enough things explicit and I’ve just assumed my students will work it out. I think I’d rather be more explicit.

Next, we pick from a complex diagram.

Now points. Which I don’t actually think is too complicated.

I’d love for people to feedback on this lesson. Is there too much spoon feeding going on here? How can I reduce the spoon feeding whilst also making skills explicit?