Teacher Guide: Lesson 14.4
The Weekly Reader Connections feature on Kids' Place Houghton Mifflin Math provides your students with additional information about the topics that appear in the Curriculum Connection feature in their student books.
The article “Baseball Swings Into Art” describes aspects of a recent museum exhibit focusing on baseball and art. You may wish to introduce the article by asking students to name some historical baseball figures. Ask students to tell (or research) what the individuals were known for or why they made history.
The Word Wise activity identifies three of the vocabulary words as spelling demons. Students' findings are likely to reveal that people often misspell the words pastime, trivia, and consciousness in similar ways.
If tangram sets are available, distribute them to groups of students before introducing the Data Hunt activity. Alternatively, make copies of the Tangram Square Worksheet (PDF file) and distribute them along with scissors so that each student can have a set.
Be sure that students can differentiate between an interior angle and an exterior angle. Then have students work together on the activity.
| Which piece? | Small triangle | Medium triangle | Square | Parallelogram | Large triangle |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| How many angles? | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 |
| How many degrees in each angle? | One 90° angle Two 45° angles |
One 90° angle Two 45° angles |
Four 90° angles | Two 45° angles Two 135° angles |
One 90° angle Two 45° angles |
If students use the tangram pieces to measure the angles, they should discover that by covering the square with the two small triangles they can see why the acute angles of these triangles each measure 45°. Similarly, when students superimpose these triangles on the obtuse angle of the parallelogram, such that the right angle of one touches the acute angle of the other, they should be able to deduce that the obtuse angle of the parallelogram measures 90° + 45°, or 135°.