Clinometer Activity and Foldable

I love this clinometer activity for giving my trigonometry students extra practice finding missing angles and sides of right triangles. Plus, it answers the question of “When will we ever use this?”

I printed a clinometer template off of VirtualMaths.org for them to use.

I mistakenly assumed that they would be able to put together their clinometers, take their measurements, and finding the missing heights all in one fifty minute class period.  I was WRONG.  Somehow, it took my trig students almost 40 minutes of the 50 minute period to build a single clinometer.  With a template.  I’m still not sure why this took that long.

Here’s what the clinometers looked like when they were completed:

I created this template for students to organize their work in their interactive notebooks.  They were required to use trig to measure the height of three different objects around the school grounds.