options: Number Systems and Quantity: students learn to understand the complex number system and reason quantitatively.

Modeling: students learn to choose and use appropriate mathematics and statistics to analyze real-world empirical situations, improve decisions, and report on their conclusions and the reasoning behind them.

Ratios & Proportional Relationships: students learn to recognize, describe, represent, and reason with ratios, rates, proportional relationships, and percent.

Functions: students learn to define, use, and evaluate functions to model relationships between quantities.

Number & Operations in Base Ten: students learn to work with the base-ten system and build place value understanding.

Operations & Algebra: students learn to solve problems using algebraic thinking and operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. They may learn to identify and explain arithmetic patterns, evaluate or manipulate numerical expressions, and reason with equations and inequalities.

Number & Operations - Fractions: students learn to understand fractions as numbers and may work with them using addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

Statistics & Probability: students learn to analyze and produce data distributions, and build understanding of univariate and bivariate data. They learn to interpret data, make statistical inferences, justify conclusions, understand rules of probability, and use probability to make decisions.

Geometry: students learn to classify geometric figures by their properties, and understand and compare the relationships between them. Students develop and use formulas to compute lengths, areas, and volumes, and they use transformations to generate new shapes and compare existing ones. Geometry can be studied with and without coordinates.

Measurement & Data: students learn to work with data and measure attributes such as time, money, length, area, and volume. They may learn to compare measurements to operations and convert between different units of measure.

Counting & Cardinality: students learn to know number names and the count sequence, count to tell the number of objects, and compare numbers.
problem_activity: Activity
In this activity, students determine the length of a “diagonal” line segment on a grid. Students can give an exact value for the length of the line segment by finding the area of a square and writing the side length using square root notation. The goal of this activity is for students to connect values expressed using square roots with values expressed in decimal form—a form they are more familiar with.
Monitor for students who draw a tilted square for the first problem during the first two minutes of work time. Then monitor for students who use the following strategies to find the length of the segment:
drawing a square and finding the area
using tracing paper
using a compass to make a circle
Launch
For this activity, it is best if students do not have access to a calculator with a square root button. If student calculators do have a square root button that students are familiar with, tell students that their explanations about their answers to the second problem need to dig deeper than pressing a button. In later lessons, however, they will be able to use it.
Before students begin, remind students that “exact length” means it can’t just be an approximation, so if it is not a rational number, we should write it with square root notation. For example, a square with area 17 has a side length of exactly
\(\sqrt{17}\)
, which is a little larger than 4, since
\(4^2=16\)
.
Begin by displaying the diagram for all to see. Ask students how this diagram is similar and how it is different from the diagram in the warm-up. Then 2–3 minutes after students begin working, pause the class and select a previously identified student who drew a square on the grid to share what they did and why. Give 2–3 minutes work time to finish the problems followed by a whole-class discussion.
Representation: Internalize Comprehension.
Activate or supply background knowledge. Provide students with access to tracing paper, straight edges, and compasses to support information processing in estimating the length of the line segment.
Supports accessibility for: Visual-spatial processing; Organization
Student Facing
[IMG]
Estimate the length of the line segment to the nearest tenth of a unit (each grid square is 1 square unit).
Find the exact length of the segment.
Student Response
Teachers with a valid work email address can
click here to register or sign in
for free access to Student Response.
Activity Synthesis
Select students to present in this sequence:
Someone who drew a square and used the area to find the exact side length.
Someone who used tracing paper. This is essentially like the number line as a ruler. Ask students what this tells us about the exact value we found with the square. (
\(\sqrt{10}\)
is about 3.1.)
Someone who used a compass to find the approximate side length. This is a more formal geometric construction, but it is just another way to use the number line as a ruler.
Speaking, Listening: MLR8 Discussion Supports.
As students share their methods for finding the exact length of the line segment, press for details in students’ reasoning by asking how they know the figure they drew in the coordinate plane is a square. Listen for and amplify the language students use to describe the important features of the square (e.g., opposite sides are equal, opposite sides are parallel, each angle is
\(90^\circ\)
). Then ask students to explain why the side length of the tilted square must be
\(\sqrt{10}\)
. This will support rich and inclusive discussion about strategies for finding the exact length of a line segment in the coordinate plane.
Design Principle(s): Support sense-making


correct_option_index: 0

5