options: Counting & Cardinality: students learn to know number names and the count sequence, count to tell the number of objects, and compare numbers.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Functions: students learn to define, use, and evaluate functions to model relationships between quantities.
problem_activity: Activity
The goal of this activity is for students to use the definition of similarity, and to practice applying some of the skills they learned when studying congruent figures to similar figures. Students practice writing a sequence of rigid motions and dilations to take one figure onto another, write accurate similarity statements about the figures, and reason about what must be true about corresponding side lengths.
Launch
Ask students to add this definition to their reference charts as you add it to the class reference chart:
One figure is
similar
to another if there is a sequence of rigid motions and dilations that takes the first figure so that it fits exactly over the second. (Definition)
Translation and dilation takes
\(\triangle ABC\)
onto
\(\triangle FDE\)
so
\(\triangle ABC \sim \triangle FDE\)
[IMG]
Tell students
\(\triangle ABC \sim \triangle FDE\)
is a similarity statement, and we read
\(\sim\)
as “is similar to.”
Arrange students in groups of 2. After quiet work time, ask students to compare their responses to their partner’s and decide if they are both correct, even if they are different. Follow with a whole-class discussion.
Writing, Listening, Conversing: MLR1 Stronger and Clearer Each Time.
Use this routine to help students improve their written responses for the sequence of transformations that takes one triangle to the other. Give students time to meet with 2–3 partners to share and get feedback on their responses. Display feedback prompts that will help students strengthen their ideas and clarify their language. For example, “What is the directed line segment of the translation?” and “What is the center and scale factor of the dilation?” Invite students to go back and revise or refine their written explanation based on the feedback from peers. This will help students use precise language to describe the sequence of transformations that takes one triangle to the other.
Design Principle(s): Optimize output (for explanation); Cultivate conversation
Representation: Internalize Comprehension.
Activate or supply background knowledge about symbolic notation. Provide students with access to explanations of symbols used in the caption for parallel and perpendicular, and connect to the right angle symbol in the image which shows that two segments are perpendicular.
Supports accessibility for: Memory; Conceptual processing
Student Facing
Are the triangles
similar
?
\(\overline{AB}\parallel\overline{QR},\overline{AB}\perp\overline{AE},\overline{QR}\perp\overline{QT}\)
[IMG]
Write a sequence of transformations (dilation, translation, rotation, reflection) to take one triangle to the other.
Write a similarity statement about the 2 figures, and explain how you know they are similar.
Compare your statement with your partner’s statement. Is there more than one correct way to write a similarity statement? Is there a wrong way to write a similarity statement?
Student Response
Teachers with a valid work email address can
click here to register or sign in
for free access to Student Response.
Anticipated Misconceptions
If students struggle to define sequences of rigid motions and dilations, review an example from the card sort.
Activity Synthesis
Ask students to determine if their sequence of rigid motions and dilations will always work for any pair of triangles that have all pairs of corresponding angles congruent and all pairs of corresponding sides lengths in the same proportion. (Probably not, some figures would require rotations and dilations. But the general method of dilating and using rigid motions will always work.)
For students who dilated first, ask:
How do you choose the dilation to use? (Dilate from any vertex, by the scale factor given by the ratio of a pair of corresponding sides.)
Once you dilate, how do you know you’ll be able to use rigid motions to take one triangle to the other? (The triangles will be congruent, because their corresponding angles will remain congruent, and all their side lengths will be multiplied by the value
\(k\)
that you need to make them the same length as the corresponding side. Since all the corresponding angles and all the corresponding sides will match, you’ll be able to take one triangle to the other.)
For students who used rigid motions first, ask:
How do you know rigid motion will line up parts of the figures? (Because corresponding angles are congruent, we’ll be able to line up both of the rays that meet at the vertex by translating and rotating, because you can always take an angle onto another congruent angle.)
How do you know that dilation will then line up the remaining two points? (The sides lengths will be in the same proportion, because we’re given that information, and the angles all line up, so the triangles are dilations of each other.)


correct_option_index: 8