MTBoS Challenge Sunday Summary

3 Favorite Questions From My Favorite Activity This Week:

We did these extension questions in PreAP Precal for 2 days: (.doc file here)

These came from a variety of places–textbook, MTBoS, a resource with free-response-questions for Precal level, my own mind. My three favorite questions:

1) Take a look at #6 there.  With 5-7 groups in each class, we got 5-7 different orderings.  What rich discussions we had!  What beautiful diagrams they drew (big whiteboards, I want to marry you)!  MIND-BLOWING FACT FOR ME: The absolute value of tangent of an angle is always bigger than the absolute value of its sine value. 

Good topics to bring up: how does tangent relate to slope?  what does “approaching undefined” mean?  what is a good way to discuss numbers whose absolute value is bigger, but since we’re in negative land, it means they are smaller?  what is a good way to organize these?

2) Ah, the fabulous #7. We had just discussed odd and even functions in the previous chapter so this was a great opportunity to bring up the algebraic definition and how it relates to the graph of these guys!  (Not going to lie to you, this is first time I realized that the graphs of sine/tangent are odd and cosine is even)

3) Here are the answers they will tell you for #10: (1, 1) (1, -1) (-1, -1) (-1, 1).  Then they will not believe you when you tell them that it is incorrect.  Then they will draw a picture to prove it and tell you the square root of one squared plus one squared is 1.

2 Awesome Things That Happened This Week

1) My version of Math Maintenance bellringers paid off!  Since bellringers are “non-negotiable” this year, I thought I’d take advantage of the fact that they don’t have to be ACT review questions until the 2nd nine weeks.  So I’ve been throwing review questions up, not from the day before, but from the previous week.  My kids did somewhat better on those sections than the teacher who did just random review, and I know I’m not a better teacher than her!  So I’m going to have to say that it was the math maintenance bellringers that made the difference!

2) I made it through the entire week without crying, which is a first for this school year.  Winning!

1 Thing I’m Looking Forward To

Trying my first Mathalicious lesson in Algebra II!  A little worried, but hey, gotta grow sometime!

Category: Precal | Tags: ,

One comment on “MTBoS Challenge Sunday Summary

  1. […] Then it’s time for one of my favorite group work worksheets, (that I already wrote about here): […]

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