Cornell Notes with Similar Figures

As one student told me today, she really likes it when we get to color. She went on to explain that middle school students should color more because it helps make things easier. Well, I fulfilled her wish today by using a combination of coloring and guided notes.

The students were each told to select 6 colors. I wanted them to use 3 colors for the 3 corresponding sides, and 3 different colors for the congruent angels. This ended up being a good strategy because the students are starting to request the colors when they work independently or on small groups.

Some students still struggle when the 2nd figure is transformed (flipped, rotated, etc.) But using the colors have made this a smaller percentage.

I will say, next year that I teach this, I need to stay away from words like smaller and larger, or say larger shape/smaller shape. I realized half way through that my students that are setting up the proportion wrong were confused by these words. Instead of knowing that I meant larger shaping, they thought I meant, larger number. Which would then give them the wrong answer.


I have provided a link to the Cornell notes here.

On the back, I included some SOL type questions so the students can see the vocabulary used.