Polynomial Picture Project

Projects allow the students to show off their creativity and math skills! This one requires students to use Desmos to help create a polynomial function that fits a picture of their choice. As you can see with some of the projects below - the ideas vary immensely. Some of the students are very clever and others just use the McDonald's sign. However, each year, the students amaze us at what they find.

Instead of using their calculators - here's how Desmos will find the regression line. In my video, I just did a simple quadratic, but our students have to create a regression equation that requires at least 3 relative extrema.

Typically, we show the students how to use the Desmos regression option before sharing the project. Some students have trouble fitting the graphs because they choose too many points, and others are upset that it doesn't fit perfectly! We reassure our students that this is the best fit - not a perfect fit.

Once students have the regression equation, they must find zeros, extrema, the y-intercept, domain & range, increasing & decreasing, and end behavior. All of this information should be presented in a Google Slide and shared with us before the deadline. One reason we switched to Google Slides is for feedback. We allow our students to turn in projects early, and we make comments on each slide. Then the students can resubmit (if they want) up until the deadline. Most of our students take advantage of this gift.

This is a great project, and it's always fun to see what our students come up with!

Here is our project: Polynomial Hunt Project

Here is the RUBRIC that we created using Alice Keeler's Template Tab. (If you have not tried this - you must now!!!!)

Here's the version that is fully in Desmos.

~RJ & SSB

Comments

AP Calculus Hunger Games Review

I created this a couple of years ago when Hunger Games was really popular. However, I thought that I would share with all of you in case you wanted to use or revamp to something newer. I created 12 groups for the 12 districts. They decided what their name would be as a district. They had tasks each day to accomplish. The tasks were just multiple choice questions centered around the major topics of Calculus AB. This took a lot longer than I thought - about 4 days. I was forced to give them more than 15 minutes for each task (which did not make me happy since the AP exam is timed - Oh well.) I had the time, and it worked out. You can decide how you want to the points to work, I gave them 2 points for each correct answer. It was very easy to grade as this is the student worksheet. They placed the letter of the answer in each spot. I made them show all work on another student sheet so that I could see what we needed to review. Each day, I would post the new rankin

Adding & Subtracting Rational Expressions Drag & Drop

Because Math 3 now has drag & drop on the final exam, students need the practice. So, I created one using Google Slides. It went over really well! While this only took the students about 40-45 minutes to complete, it took me about 2 days to create this activity. Oh well, at least it is cute! :) I used Google Drawings to create the scene and took a screenshot of the drawing to post as the background in Google Slides. This worked so that students could only move the answers. I created this for an Honors class and one of the problems (#5 - the one pictured) really stumped the kiddos. I loved it! They kept thinking that x - 1 was not part of the common denominator...they didn't realize that they needed to simplify after subtracting. It really made them think! When they were finished, they shared it with me! I really think that this helped the kids get more practice on drag & drop while working on adding and subtracting rational expressions! Here is the ac

Exponential Growth & Decay Scavenger Hunt

Scavenger Hunts are always fun (and easy to grade). This particular one is all about applications of exponential growth & decay. My students seem to understand this topic really well, but I still wanted to provide more practice. When I did this hunt originally, I created the cards with the answer on the front and the question on the back. Once I figured out how to copy and make it work, it was great because I could use the cards over and over again. However, they started looking old, and I lost some of the cards. So t his year, I placed the answer and question on the front. It made it so much easier to copy! If you would like to try this in your class, here is a copy ! I included the solutions as well. UPDATE: I created this activity and transformed into a remote version. Remote Version: SE Scavenger Hunt TE Scavenger Hunt ~RJ

Girl Math

Search This Blog