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Showing posts from 2021

Exponential and Logarithmic Review: Sum of Three

 I broke out the Sum of Three again. I just love this activity! I posted the student sheet in our online course, but you can email them. Students work on groups of three problems each, at their pace and in the order they want. There are four groups for this particular activity. Students may work alone, in pairs or in groups of three - I would not have groups larger than three since that would leave the others with nothing much to do. Once students have completed one group of three problems (groups are listed below), they take the sum of all of the answers and put the sum into the form (linked on the student sheet). If they are correct, they move on. If they are incorrect, they will get an error message and will need to figure out what went wrong. They do this for all problem sets until they can submit the form. Problem groups Solving Exponential Equations Solving Logarithmic Equations Solving Natural Logs Solving Challenge While I used this as a quiz review for Precalculus, it could al

Precalculus Activities for Remote/F2F/Hybrid

The 2020-2021 School year was a mess! Our district started as remote, moved to AA/BB day Hybrid in October, and then open to all in April. This basically meant that students could come F2F full time, F2F part time, or remain remote. They could also decide any morning which option they were feeling. Needless to say, it was crazy! Because of all the craziness, I was not able to keep up with this blog very often. Therefore, I decided to put all of the new and (hopefully) improved activities we did in Precalculus in this one post. Everything on this page is workable for all of the student options mentioned above. Applications of Exponential and Logarithmic Functions  (Drag and Drop) Exponential and Logarithmic Functions Recap (Sum of Three Activity) Key Features of Polynomial Functions (Desmos Activity) Sinusoidal Modeling Clue (Drag and Drop) Trig Identities: Escape the Building (SlidesMania) Circle Trig Recap (Deck.Toys) Right Triangle Trig Applications (Drag and Drop) Ambiguous Ca

Composite Functions

Whether you introduce composite functions in Math 3 or Precalculus, here are a couple of options to spice up your lesson! Option 1 I like using this activity in my Precalculus class as an introduction to composite functions. This could be used as an exit slip on day 1 of teaching this topic or a stand alone activity on day 2. Part A (Number Line) has students evaluating composite functions with specific values then arranging the slides in numerical order. Part B (Cut and Paste) uses two functions: f(x) and g(x). Students are to evaluate both f(g(x)) and g(f(x)); if they are correct, they will find their answer on the final slide of the presentation. Students will cut the answers and place it in the appropriate location for that problem. If the learners are incorrect, their answers will (probably) not be found and they will need to redo the problem to find their mistake. Here is the key for this activity. Option 2 I used this activity as a project and allowed students to work with a

Fundamental Theorem of Calculus Digital Escape

  I'm so excited for this digital activity. I am so tired of worksheets. Yuck! I feel like since we have been hybrid, my creativity has been lacking, so I spent all day creating something that could have been done within an hour for a worksheet. However, it was worth it!  So, I always use slidesmania's templates. They are AWESOME! So, when I saw the building with the elevator template, I had to create an escape room. Thank goodness for slidesmania! She creates the best templates...and shares for free! I love it!  While slidesmania did all of the hard work, it still took a long time to come up with the plan for my actiivty. I thought about it for a while. I finally came up with the idea of an escape room with different options which would take kids to a different room. They have to answer correctly to find the room with the key to get out of the apartment building. What took the longest you ask? Decorating the rooms...I used remove.bg to remove all of the backgrounds. That is

Key Features of Polynomials

  After teaching for seventeen years, I have always found students struggle with domain, range, increasing and decreasing. I have also struggled trying to find different ways to teach the concept. Since math came easy to me, I just understood those concepts; however, students really struggle to see what I see. :) This year, my students are finally "getting" the concept of domain and range. For domain, I told the kids that there was a man walking the x-axis looking up and down. Where does he start to see the graph? Where does he stop seeing the graph as he is walking the x-axis? Same for range...a little guy is climbing up the y-axis looking left and right. Where does he start to see the graph? Where does he stop seeing the graph as he climbs? It isn't perfect, but I think the kids got it. As for increasing and decreasing...I told the kids to find the min and max first. Thank God for Desmos! :) I told them to label the x-value for min and max on their graphs. Then I treate

Absolute Value Equations & Inequalities

Ever since NC has designed the Math 3 EOC with more question types besides multiple choice, I have embraced drag and drop activities. They are just so easy for me to grade! And right now, with learning Canvas and making video lessons for all of my classes, I do not have the time to grade. However, I feel that feedback is important, so why not make it easier on myself and allow for students to practice drag and drops for the EOC?  This activity provides the students with practice on solving absolute value equations and inequalities. I also included some application problems as well. It is a short activity, but I think with online learning...it is perfect. Since I use Canvas, I share the assignment using the external tool: Google Assignments (LTI 1.3). I love it! Each student gets a copy and is very similar to Google Classroom where I can make comments on their document. I like this because not every student goes back into Canvas to view comments. However, since I am making comments on t