Working with Geometer's Sketchpad

.pdf files require Acrobat Reader (free)

       Materials and directions presented on these pages are designed for
Geometer's Sketchpad 4.0 or higher. They are not applicable to GSP 3.0.
     Accompanying worksheets are in .pdf format and require free Acobat Reader.

Below, you will find the headings: Pre-Made Materials, From Scratch Matierials, and Tidbits of Information.

Pre-Made Materials:

Oftentimes it is difficult to find the time for a class to create their own Geometer's Sketchpad activities from scratch. This is especially true if the class is not well versed in using the software.

Don't let the lack of time or software experience stop you and your students from enjoying the benefits of this amazing teaching tool. Both of these drawbacks can be easily remedied by utilizing already prepared exploration files with "simple to use" directions. Such files can be used for lesson demonstrations or student explorations. An accompanying worksheet for student explorations will help to keep the students focused and on task.

The files below are already prepared explorations in Geometer's Sketchpad. The work of creating the diagrams and exploration situations has already been completed. The files are ready for use with only a minimal amount of pre-instruction. Most of these GSP files have accompanying worksheets.

(Pre-Made Materials for use with Geometer's Sketchpad 4.0 or higher-- not GSP 3.0)

Title	Course	Description
Hitting the Slopes with Ski Bird	PreAlgebra Algebra	Help students to understand the concept of slope and equations of lines. Works well as a class demonstration.
Examining Angles in Polygons	Geometry	Help students to discover or reinforce the angle formulas associated with polygons. Shows best on 1024 x 768 screen (or larger)
Quadrilaterals	Geometry	Investigate the parallelogram, rectangle, square, rhombus, and isosceles trapezoid. Shows best on 800 x 600 screen (or larger).
Transformations	Geometry	Investigate reflections, translations, glide reflections, dilations, rotations 90º, 180º, 270º or any degree, and composition of reflections. Animations included on several pages. Usable at various grade levels. Shows best on 1024 x 768 screen (or larger)
Examining Angles in Circles	Geometry	Investigate central angles, inscribed angles, angles formed by a tangent and chord, angles formed by intersecting chords, angels formed by two secants, angles formed by a tangent and a secant, and angles formed by two tangents. Shows best on 1024 x 768 screen (or larger)
Examining Segments in Circles	Geometry	Investigate the segment relationships in circles relating to chords, secants and tangents. Shows best on 1024 x 768 screen (or larger)
Trigonometric Functions	Algebra 2	Investigate sine, cosine, tangent, cosecant, secant, cotangent, sine inverse, cosine inverse, and tangent inverse function graphs. Shows best on 1024 x 768 screen (or larger)
Functions	Algebra 2 (PreCalculus)	Investigate constant, linear, quadratic, cubic, square root, cube root, absolute value, rational, natural log, and exponential functions. Parent functions and full form functions for modification are present. Shows best on 800 x 600 screen (or larger)

From-Scratch Materials:

So you have access to a computer lab completely loaded with Geometer's Sketchpad and you are
wondering what you should do with this luxury. How should you present GSP instruction to your students?

What type of worksheets do you need to keep the students on task as they learn to manipulate this
software package?

The files below are worksheets designed to lead students through developing their own GSP files. The worksheets present directions and investigative questions. The teacher should have a basic working knowledge of the GSP software in order to troubleshoot problems when students go astray. Simply pre-running the worksheets to see what is involved should be sufficient preparation.

(From-Scratch Materials for use with Geometer's Sketchpad 4.0 or higher-- not GSP 3.0)

Title	Grade Level	Description
Transformations	Geometry	Complete direction sheets for developing and investigating line reflections, point reflections, dilations, translations, rotations, and glide reflections.
Tangents to a Circle from an External Point	Geometry	Step-by-step directions for constructing tangents to a circle from an external point.
Angles and Parallel Lines	Geometry	Step-by-step directions for investigating parallel and non-parallel lines and angles. Directions sheet and observation sheet.