This activity gives students an opportunity to determine and request the information needed to solve a problem that uses the Pythagorean Theorem.  

The Info Gap structure requires students to make sense of problems by determining what information is necessary, and then to ask for information they need to solve it. This may take several rounds of discussion if their first requests do not yield the information they need (MP1). It also allows them to refine the language they use and ask increasingly more precise questions until they get the information they need (MP6).

After students have completed their work, share the correct answers and ask students to discuss the process of solving the problems. Here are some questions for discussion:

• “What strategies did you use to help you understand the problem?” (I drew a picture.)

• “Would the Pythagorean Theorem still be useful in a room or space that was not rectangular?" (The Pythagorean Theorem is only useful if the length to be determined is one of the legs of a right triangle.)

Highlight for students the difference between finding the length of a leg compared to finding the length of a hypotenuse. If time allows and it is not mentioned by students, highlight the fact that Tyler and the school can not buy 8.1 strings of light and discuss whether it makes sense to buy 8 or 9 strings of light.

Math Community
Invite 2–3 students to share the norm they chose and how it supported the work of the group or a realization they had about a norm that would have worked better in this situation. Provide these sentence frames to help students organize their thoughts in a clear, precise way:

• “I picked the norm “.” It really helped me/my group because .”
• “I picked the norm “.” During the activity, I realized the norm “” would be a better focus because .”