SOLs Covered: 7.MG.3 Compare & Contrast Properties of Quadrilaterals
Math Topic: 09 Quadrilaterals
Daily Agenda: January 12-16, 2026
Upcoming Assessments: Topic 9 Formative Check (Tues. 1/20); Topic 10 Formative Check (Mon. 1/26); Unit 6 Quads & Sim (Tues. 1/27)
Greetings! I'm working on adjusting our pacing and lesson plans based on a few factors, including the students' progress this week, so I'm going to jump straight into things and try to keep this update quick. After wrapping up the final two graded assignments from the last unit, which also happened to be the final grades from the last marking period, we jumped into our first geometry unit of the year, quadrilaterals.
On the surface, this looks like an easy topic, however it is very complex and students tend to stumble some with it. In elementary school, the shapes are taught in a disconnected manner with just minor details. This is largely due to how concrete thinking is in early childhood. While it's necessary in elementary school, it does make the transition in middle school more difficult as students have to be more flexible in their thinking in order to get how the various quadrilaterals are connected. To help with this, I talk about the shapes as being part of the quadrilateral family and compare the diagram we use to show the connections to a family tree. While this helps, the students still must give tremendous focus on the characteristics of each shape when they answer questions about them.
The hardest thing for most students at first is understanding that some shapes can be called multiple names. The shape most people would refer to as a square can also be called a rhombus, a rectangle, a parallelograms, as well as a quadrilateral. To aid in this thinking process, I tell the kids to think about their own names and how they have at least a first and last name, possibly one or more middle names and/or nicknames, they have a name they likely prefer over the others. I also compare the quadrilaterals to dogs; all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares the same way that all pit bulls are dogs but not all dogs are pit bulls. These things have helped, but there are a few other components we're still working to fully grasp, so the previously mentioned formative check is being moved to Tuesday (reminder that we're off on Monday) before we move onto the next topic that is part of the sixth unit of the year.
This has gotten a bit longer than I was going for (though I'm sure most of you are used to that by now with me), so I'm going to close things out here. Please feel free to email if you have any questions, though again I want to remind everyone that I do not respond to emails outside of working hours in efforts to establish a more healthy work/life balance. I hope everyone has an amazing weekend!