Highly Effective Strategy for Teaching Right Triangles - FREEBIE!

Give students a transparent tool to help them label triangles!
Students often have trouble labeling parts (such as x, 2x, a, b, c, opposite, adjacent, hypotenuse, etc) of triangles for Special Triangles, Pythagorean Theorem, and Trigonometry. To help my students do this correctly, I give each student a labeled triangle printed on transparency film.

Then when students are working on one of these types of problems, they line up their transparency with the problem on their paper. They line up the right angle and the given angle (if applicable). Then using their transparency students are able to accurately label their paper with items such as opposite, adjacent, hypotenuse, etc. This has been an amazing strategy in my classroom! Students beg “can I use my transparency on this???”

Modification:
If you don’t have access to copying transparency film, you can have students create the same effect by having them use a note card and sharpie marker to draw these triangles. When the marker bleeds through the note card, it creates a similar affect as the transparency.

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