This is the first Notice and Wonder activity in the course. Students are shown a geometric construction composed of seven circles and asked, “What do you notice? What do you wonder?

Students are given a few minutes to write down what they notice and wonder about the construction and then time to share their thoughts. Their responses are recorded for all to see. Often, the goal is to elicit observations and curiosities about a mathematical idea students are about to explore. Pondering the two open questions allows students to build interest about and gain entry into an upcoming task.

The purpose of this Warm-up is to elicit the idea that many shapes can emerge within the regular hexagon construction, which will be useful when students reason about other shapes and construct equilateral triangles in a later activity. While students may notice and wonder many things about this image, the different polygons that students could draw using the given image is the important discussion point. (See following activities in this lesson for examples of these polygons.)

This Warm-up prompts students to make sense of a problem before solving it by familiarizing themselves with a context and the mathematics that might be involved (MP1).