Lesson 4

Distances and Circles

Lesson Narrative

In this lesson, students repeatedly test whether points are on a circle by finding the distance between the points and the circle’s center. As students carry out their testing, they look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning (MP8), eventually writing a generalized equation for a circle.

This lesson requires more algebraic fluency than the previous lessons in this course, as do the next several lessons. Depending on students’ familiarity and comfort with the algebra skills involved, it might make sense to spend more than one day on some lessons.


Learning Goals

Teacher Facing

  • Generalize (using words and other representations) the process of repeated distance calculations to derive an equation for a circle in the coordinate plane.

Student Facing

  • Let’s build an equation for a circle.

Required Materials

Learning Targets

Student Facing

  • I can derive an equation for a circle in the coordinate plane.

CCSS Standards

Building On

Addressing

Building Towards

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