In te beggining of the class, as usual, we corrected the homework due today. Number 26 brought lots of difficulties. Ms. Saatkamp corrected it on the board, and showed it is very important to keep what we learned last year in Algebra 1: in this exercise, for example, we use quadratic equations with the quadratic formula (ax²+bx+c=0).


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Afterwards, we reviewed what we had learned until now, and were introduced to our new topic (in red) - lesson 6-3: Notice the rectangles only have one property. That is because they belong to the parallelograms' category, so rectangles has the same traits of the parallelograms plus a special characteristic - 4 right angles.





Defining triangles, we learned that they are QUADRILATERALS with 4 right angles. There is no mention about being a parallelogram: it is something we have to prove, using theorem 6-6.

Further in Lesson 6-3, we learned two new theorems:

• Theorem 6-9: If a parallelogram is a rectangle, then it's diagonals are congruent.
• Theorem 6-10: if a parallelogram has congruent diagonals, then it is a rectangle.

Our homework for this chapter is page 310 #s 15-38 all.

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We also talked about the presentation we are doing next week for the elementary students. he presentation will be divided into 3 categories. Bellow you can see who is in charge of what, and what each category is about:

1. Introduction - brief introduction to Tangram history and explanation of the shapes (what they are, how the game works,...). In here, we decided to use the power point of one of Giulia's group (I'm sorry, I forgot the other members). People in charge of this are Luiza Cristina and Giulia
2. Story - in here, we will choose one of the stories of the origin of Tangram invented by the groups, and present to the children, in an entertaining way. Members of this group are Ana Beatriz, André, Luiza Siqueira, Luis, and Luiza Cristna
3. Playing with kids - people of this group will prepare games, competitions and "gincanas" to interact with the kids. Ms. Saatkamp asked for simple, easy games to be done, since the time these persons will have to present may be very short or very long. One of the options given by Ms. Saatkamp was dividing the kids into groups, with one person in charge of each. We can focus on a theme, like Christmas. People in charge of this are Gabriel, Gustavo, João, Guilherme, Phil - and, as back up, André, Ana Beatri and Giulia.

We do have two very important things to keep in mind in here:

• First of all, we cannot forget to do all the presentations in ENGLISH, which is required by our teacher for the grading - she said if we don't follow this rule, we WON'T be graded
• All of us will present in only one class period, which means we can't have huge presentations. We have to be brief and go directly to the point, but, of course, be sure that the children understand what we are talking about
• We have to pay attention to the language and entonation. THEY ARE FIRST GRADERS! We cannot say "this is a parallelogram", for they won't understand. We have to look for simple words for the explanation
• Last, and extremally important: the key word for all this is INTERACTION. That means we have to interact with the children, be creative so that it doesn't get boring, and teach them with good strategies.

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Well, that was it... See you guys tomorrow ;D