Lines and Angles Unit Project - Angle City

I am always looking for a way to add some art and creativity into my math class, my class this year LOVES to draw so I knew they would love an opportunity to draw and be creative in math class.

We just finished a unit on angles and lines. We studied all the classifications of angles (acute, straight, right, obtuse, reflex) and worked with measures of complementary angles, supplementary angles, angles formed when parallel lines are cut by a transversal, angles around a point and more!

For their end of unit project they had to create their own city map using a variety of angles.  I gave the kids a checklist with everything they needed to include.  They had to plan where to place the specifics I laid out in the project:  the types and amount of angles formed by the roads, what buildings needed to be located on different angle intersections, all the buildings that they must include, etc..

First I had them sketch out a rough draft so they could easily move streets/buildings around to get everything to meet the exact specifications required.

Once they were happy with their draft they transferred their map to a 11 x 17 piece of white paper.  For their final copy they had to include color, a city name, the city population, street names, building labels, and it needed to be neat and organized.  

They totally got into this project!  It was so fun to see them figuring out how to make the roads meet to form obtuse angles, and where to place buildings.  Many of them also got very creative and based their city name and street names around a theme (space, the ocean etc..)

I was very impressed with the final projects they turned in!  Here are some pictures of some of their finished designs.

Do you do any fun and creative projects in your math class?  I would love to hear about them!

Math on Monday

It is back to school tomorrow after a nice two week winter break!  It was great to have the time off, lots of relaxing, sleeping in, reading, and down time.

I am excited to start a new math unit on angles.  I teach a group of gifted math learners, so even though I am teaching 5th graders we are often working on math topics/skills at the 6th-8th grade level.

I created this Power Point presentation to review the parts of an angle, how to label angles and the different. types of angles.

After the review,  the slides move into some new material like complementary and supplementary angles, angles formed when parallel lines are cut by a transversal, and angles around a point.

The kids will be learning how to use geometric reasoning to figure out angle measures using what they know about the properties of different types of angles and putting the pieces together to figure out the unknown.  Some of these problems can get quite challenging, involving multiple steps, which is great for deeper thinking and encouraging perseverance!

I am also working on putting together some exit slips to use at the end of class to quickly assess what the kids know and what we need more review and practice with.

I have the angles slides in my Teachers Pay Teachers store if you are interested in using them with your class too!