Some ideas for sentence frames/starters that could be incorporated into your lesson are listed below. If you think a sentence frame/starter will be helpful, consider how will it support students’ mathematical learning and/or development of academic language, and decide which sentence frame/starter (from the list below or that you create) would best support students’ learning. You may find that the starters and frames vary in level of difficulty, and plan to provide them to students accordingly.
Starters
To decide where to make a cut, I thought about
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The cut that I made allowed me to make a rectangle because
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Frames
I learned that the _______________ from the beginning of the problem has the same _____________ as the ______________ that I created.
The cut that I made allowed me to make a ____________ because
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
************************************************************************************************************
Academic Language
Students should have opportunities to see, hear, and write key mathematical ideas during this activity. There are some specific terms that students need to understand in order to engage in this task, and there are some additional terms and phrases that may surface as the students engage with the task. You may think of additional words or phrases that are key to this activity. As the task is introduced, solved by the students, and discussed, ensure that students have opportunities to experience (i.e., through discussion, pictures, and the use of gestures) and to build understanding for key words and phrases. Examples of words and phrases that may be involved in work on this problem include:
- perpendicular to the side of the parallelogram
- the angles changed
- opposite sides are still parallel
- opposite sides are still the same length
- midpoint of the side
- these two angles together make a straight line
- parallelogram; rearrange; rectangle; pieces; properties; transformed; stayed the same
- final shape; convincing; any; right triangle; geometric figures; dissect
- cut
************************************************************************************************************