Math is an esoteric subject for most people. Good instruction makes information meaningful. One method for making information meaningful is to connect new information to prior experience.
In this situation the new information involves determining whether shapes are similar (see photo below). One example of student prior experience with this topic would be shrinking people down. In the photo above I use Mini Me and Dr. Evil and their respective (and fabricated) weights and shoe sizes as measures that will eventually give way to measures of sides of a polygon (below). When working on the problem below the students can be prompted by recalling the analogy of Mini Me and Dr. Evil.
[…] the use of UDL, differentiation, formative assessment, instructional strategies to make content meaningful and concrete and to meet student needs in general. The general classroom is Tier […]
[…] Piaget highlighted, our brains make connections between new information and previous information (prior knowledge). I introduce the concept of congruent triangles by connecting it to prior knowledge of identical […]