From: Suzanne A. <suzanne@mathforum.org>
To: Teacher2Teacher Public Discussion
Date: 2004060310:39:52
Subject: Re: Manipulatives for square roots

Hi Paul,

>I think you have got it with your link.
>>http://mathforum.org/~salejan/squareroot.gif

Well, I must admit that I'm not totally comfortable with the
idea yet but it did seem interesting to explore.

>This works better than the Pythagorean Theorem because
>I haven't taught them that yet.  They learn it
>after I teach them about irrational and rational roots.

I don't know if this would give you more ideas but I wrote
this lesson with Nathalie Sinclair and if your students have
access to computers you might enjoy having them use the
Java Sketchpad applet that she wrote:

http://mathforum.org/alejandre/escot/numbers.html

>Thanks very much for your patience with this.

Thank you for the question! I'm enjoying thinking about
it all. I'm just a bit sorry that I'm no longer in the classroom
to try some of the ideas with students.

>It is interesting how easy it is to demonstrate the squaring
>function but to go the other way is much more work.

I agree. Please let me know how things progress!

 -Suzanne A., for the T2T service

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