Bad boys, bad boys, what cha gonna do? What cha gonna do when they come for you?
Triangles on trial (TOTs) is one of my favorite lessons ever, and it is all the brainchild of my old teaching partner Chris Bakke. We were struggling to make triangle proofs engaging. Necessity mothered this lovely invention, and TOTs was born.
This lesson came midyear, after a few big triangle ideas (congruency markings, sum of angles in a triangle etc) but before we had really jumped into the big ideas around triangle proofs or any of the formal proof writing. We built out a bunch of these TOTs case files. Each case file had security camera footage (featuring the guilty triangle) and below it, a lineup of potential perps.
Each group got a different case file, and had to decide which of the suspect triangles was in the security footage, and which of the triangles were innocent. Then, each group played attorney and presented their case to the class.
Obviously, we played the “bad boys” song from COPS on loop, and obviously we were dressed like judges the whole time. Also, we had the “dun dun” law and order sound effect cued up on our phones and played it over and over and over. Obviously.
Some more TOTs are below in a ppt file, if you want to start up your own congruency courtroom in class.
ppt file: TOTS
Cantankchris Math 