We changed the Learning Mode to individual. Where would you place a warehouse that needed to be equidistant from all three roads? (From Illustrative Mathematics.)
Students started sketching on paper, and I set up a Quick Poll so that we could see everyone’s conjecture at the same time.
We changed the Learning Mode to whole class. With whom do you agree?
I didn’t intend for us to talk in detail at this point. I wanted students to be able to test their conjecture using their dynamic geometry software. But we had done that the day before for Placing a Fire Hydrant (post to come), and class was cut short during this lesson because of lock-down and evacuation drills. So we did talk in more detail than I had planned. Is the point outside of the triangle equidistant from the three roads? One student vehemently defended her point: I drew a circle with that point as center that touched all three roads. (We have been talking about the distance from a point to a line.) How do you know that the roads are the same distance from the center? They are all radii of the circle. They are perpendicular to the road from the center.
Could a point inside the triangle of roads be correct? If so, which? We started drawing distances from the points to the lines. Some points were about the same distance from two of the roads but obviously to close to the third road. What’s significant about the point that will be the same distance from all three sides of a triangle? Several students wondered about drawing perpendicular bisectors. Another student vehemently insisted that the point needed to lie on an angle bisector. Would that always work?
Are you going to let us try it ourselves? Well of course! So with about 12 minutes left, students began to construct.
With about 3 minutes left, I made a student the Live Presenter who showed us that the angle bisectors are concurrent, and used the length measurement tool to show us that the point is equidistant to the sides of the triangle.
With about 2 minutes left I made another student the Live Presenter who had made a circle inside the triangle. How did you get that circle? What is significant about the circle? It’s inscribed. The center is the where the angle bisectors intersect. So we call that point the incenter. It’s the center of the inscribed circle of a triangle, and the point of concurrency for the angle bisectors. How is this point different from the circumcenter?
And with 1 minute left: Do you understand what we mean when we say that every point on an angle bisector is equidistant from the two sides?
And so while I have some record of what every student did during class through Quick Polls and Class Capture and collecting their TNS document once the bell rang, my efforts at closure are foiled again. Maybe one day I’ll actually send one of the Exit Quick Polls that I have made for every lesson.
Easing the Hurry Syndrome 