Many standardized assessments provide the special triangle relationships as a reference and ask students to reason about similar triangles. This lesson gives students an opportunity to apply their reasoning about similar figures and their skill with the Pythagorean Theorem to make sense of the relationships in special triangles and understand how they might use a reference diagram to solve problems.

Students have an opportunity to reason abstractly and quantitatively (MP2) as they find the lengths of sides of 30-60-90 triangles by both measuring and solving analytically.

Technology isn't required for this lesson, but there are opportunities for students to choose to use appropriate technology to solve problems. We recommend making technology available.