Base ten blocks are well suited for teaching trig and trig concepts in a very concrete manner. Starting off simply with Pythagorean Theorem it becomes quite clear that the blocks make things much more tangible than even the simple formula a² + b² = c². Basically we take a rectangle and cut it diagonally into a triangle and then study that and those relationships. We have names for those relationships. SOH CAH TOA will help you remember those names but it's important to understand what those relationships actually mean. As I have said about 1,000 times probably more, if all you know is sin30° = .5 and cos60° = sin30° you are going to have a bad time.
Even the entry page to the Trig page has valuable lessons you can use with your young students on it. And judging from the instant and huge response there is some demand for a method that makes trig simple and easy. One the trig page you get hours of video including lessons that actual students were given that allowed them to get 100% scores when they were formally getting less than 50% of tests right.
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| Base Ten Blocks make Trig assessable. |
The lessons on building squares are going to make Pythagoras easy to understand, Pythagoras made Trigonometry easy to understand and you will see the base ten block method makes it all understandable. On the entry page there is now a lesson about the definitions and how to use them for parents and teachers but students could benefit from it too. There is also some quick info on what to expact on the password protected page and another vid showing simple definitions. Like any language you have to know what the words mean before you can use them properly. When you teach math try to think about it the way you would teaching any other language, lighten up and play math.
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