This lesson is the first in a series of four lessons which will help build an understanding of area and perimeter by using real world applications in order to build a skateboard park.

In this lesson, students will consider and propose various factors that can be used to make decisions regarding prospective immigrants to the United States of America. Students will conduct public opinion research to determine which factors should be used, and the relative weighting that each of these factors should receive, in creating an Immigrant Scorecard.

Juxtaposing the architecture of Ellis island with that of the proposed Trump Wall creates many opportunities for mathematical analysis and frames a discussion of how our nation’s attitude toward immigration has changed

This set of instructional materials and problems helps students understand ratios and proportions, starting with a simple review and progressing into the more advanced territory of similar triangles

Students will see an animated presentation of the proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. This animated PowerPoint presentation uses shearing and the invariance of the area of triangles with congruent bases and heights to show a step-by-step geometric proof of the Pythagorean Theorem.