We created our 10-Minute Minis to give teachers a fun, memorable, and time-efficient (ten minutes!) way to supplement or review a specific area of the curriculum. These shows are meant to be read aloud once, twice, or (at most) three times with different students reading different parts each time. No rehearsing; no memorizing; no costumes, sets, or audience. All the students have lines in every show, and each show has two songs that can be sung by all the students. These are NOT musical plays designed to be performed on a stage in front of an audience. We suppose it could be done that way, and it may even work pretty darn well. Teachers are a lot smarter than we are, and though we try our best to thwart your creativity, you usually outsmart us. Still, give the “reading aloud without rehearsal” system a shot. We think a show like our 10-Minute Geometry Mini will give you a lot of curricular bang for your ten-minute buck.

The Greek hero Isosceles, accompanied by his trusty horse Equilateral and Scalene the Squire, is on a quest for the perfectly shaped table for his group of heroes. Their travels take them to strange lands filled with angles (which can be quite obtuse) and triangles (some of which insist they are always right). Finally, with some advice from the Man on the Flying Trapezoid, they come to the Land of the Polygons, where they at last find their quintessential quadrilateral.

Amidst the silliness and catchy songs (two of them), The Geometry 10-Minute Mini refers to and reinforces students’ familiarity with the following aspects of geometry:

• Triangles: isosceles, equilateral, scalene, right, acute, obtuse
• Angles: right, acute, obtuse, straight, complementary, supplementary
• Polygons: triangle, pentagon, hexagon, octagon, nonagon, decagon
• Quadrilaterals: trapezoid
• Parallelograms: square, rectangle, rhombus
• Area: triangle, square, rectangle

Other references include: perimeter; congruent sides and angles; line segments; planes; parallel lines; radius; pi; irrational numbers; two-dimensional figures

Song List

1. Penta Hexa Octa Nona Deca
2. I Don't Like Pi

Please Click Here to review the first third of this play and listen to sound clips.