Insert Clever Math Pun Here

Oh, the joy of teaching logs. And by weird unit planning, I’m teaching them in both Algebra II and Precal at the same time, which makes me want to give up in Algebra II because they act like it’s the first time they’ve seen them in Precal.  Oh, wait, I forgot, all my students have math amnesia this year.  Me on a Wednesday: “This may be like what we did on Monday.” Student: “Oh, that’s too far back to remember.”

WAIT. FOCUS ON THE GOOD STUFF, RIGHT, MEG?

Oh, yeah, that’s right. I’ll go ahead and share my stuff with y’all not because it’s super awesome or mindblowing or anything, but because log stuff is hard to find out there. I basically stole some good stuff from Mimi’s “secret” method of teaching logs and turned it into a note-taker-maker (because I must turn everything into an NTM):

File here  Chocolate Covered Raindrops font here.

It went GREAT.  I didn’t even mention the “woosh” or the circle even though I love the woosh and taught it to precal. (I can’t explain why except maybe I didn’t look at Mimi’s post before the precal lesson? Or maybe sometimes I fall back into easy answers instead of deep understanding because I’m running out of time and I can’t handle another day of blank stares at papers?).  All the students were exclaiming how “easy” (!!) it was without the woosh and they didn’t even get tripped up by #15.

But now it’s time for…..

Log.

Properties.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

Here’s what I did in Precal last week:

I really liked having the numerical examples as “back up” proofs. They’re kind of magical.  And here’s what I did last year in Alg II:

And I’m also intrigued by Kate’s plans. And we have no school tomorrow and I need two more tests before the end of next week so I can’t spend too much time on it, but I’d like to do better.  I was trying to figure out how to tie in asking the question of “what power of b gives you x?” but couldn’t make it work. I’m open to any and all suggestions.

In other news, the day after log properties I gave my Precal kiddos a worksheet on solving equations with multiple logs on both sides from this workbook:

Which I need to use more often because they really put some thought into the problems. They do a good job of putting in problems where kids would make foolish mistakes and of putting them in a nice order. I just saw they have a second version that I may need to get.  Anyway, my kids did great with just a little help along the way.  Then yesterday we did this:

File here

And things were still going ok.  Late start today meant only 30 minutes to work on these mixed problems in groups:

File here

My favorite mistake was on #5, just drop all the natural logs to get x – 2 – x – 3 = x – 1 – x + 7.  Even though they did it perfectly on Friday’s worksheet.

Have I mentioned the math amnesia epidemic?!?!?

But I can’t solve that epidemic right now, so I’m going to go watch some Better Off Ted and enjoy my maybe snowless 🙁  snow day 🙂 tomorrow.

And for those of us that grew up with Ren and Stimpy, you’re welcome: