0 Trig Mini Poster Project

This is my first year teaching trig, so I'm figuring out a lot of things as I go.  There is no textbook.  No pacing guide.  Just my own experiences with taking trig in high school to guide me.  This is both exciting.  And scary.

My memories of high school trigonometry involve lots of graphing on the calculator.  I didn't want to take this approach.  My kids already seem to rely to much on the calculator to do their thinking for them.  And, I feel like one of the areas I failed these kids in Algebra 2 was transforming functions.  When they see a trig function, I want them to really see and think about what is going on with the graph, not just type an equation in their calculator and sketch the result.

So, long story short, my kids didn't really freak out when I asked them to graph trig functions by hand.  In fact, they think it's a completely normal thing to do.  Yay :)  Eventually, I had to spill the beans and admit to them that I doubt their college professors will ever ask them to graph a translated tangent graph by hand.  "But why not?  It's so easy!"

One thing I've done this year is ask my students to create mini-posters that summarize how to graph various trig functions by hand.  Some of my kids did a much better job at this than others, but I think they all learned from this process.  Instead of giving them each an equation to graph, I had them make their own equation.  (However - they can't use the equations from their notes or their neighbor's equations!)  Because my kids are smart/lazy/, they started thinking about what a,b,c,d values would make their functions easy to graph.  A lot of them realized that if they changed the b value on their sine or cosine graph to pi, they could mark their x axis in terms of integers instead of in terms of pi.  And, the best thing would be when my kids accidentally made mistakes with their graphing.  Normally, mistakes wouldn't make me that happy.  But, so many of my students would figure out how to change their equation to account for the "mistake" instead of re-graphing the entire function.  Then, it wasn't a mistake anymore.  :)

I snapped some pictures of the posters made by my students.  Some of these have errors.  So, please don't take them for gospel!

Notes to myself for next time I teach trig:
* Take better notes over how to identify/label the period/amplitude of a graph
* Have students do everything but the final graph in pencil.  Graph the final graph (after translations) in color.
* Give the mini-poster project as an assignment BEFORE the quiz instead of after it.  Lots of awesome learning happened in the process. :)

Detail: Trig Mini Poster Project

0 WWSDS: What Would Slope Dude Say?

One of my absolute favorite concepts in the world to teach is slope.  I don't know what it is about slope, but I have an absolute blast convincing students that slope doesn't have to be scary.  Plus, it involves introducing them to Slope Dude.  And, in my book, any lesson that makes the slightest mention of Slope Dude is a winner.

Hello, I am the person who has WWSDS signs hanging in her classroom.  Because you should obviously always ask yourself What Would Slope Dude Say?

Want to download these posters for your own classroom?  Click here!

I guess I should warn you about side effects of hanging these posters in your classroom, though.  I hung them up part way through our slope unit in Algebra 1 without comment.  I just waited for students to notice them.  They did.  They also started hypothesizing the meaning behind the letters.  In fact, all of my classes noticed them.  And, it was just too tempting for them to not try to guess what they must stand for.  The letters were just beckoning to them to figure their meaning out.  It makes me wish I could figure out more ways to harness my students' curiosity like this.  

My first period class decided they must mean "What Would Satan Do Seriously?"  This led to numerous (very untrue!) rumors about my being a worshiper of Satan.  Yeah...

Moving on...

During my first year of teaching, I assigned my students to draw a picture and label the different types of slope in the picture.  Then, last year, I changed things up and had them label the different types of slope that could be found in their name.  I liked this activity, but I missed the creativity that the previous activity had allowed.

This year, I decided to do the slope name art as our notebook entry and use the picture drawing assignment as the quiz.  Definitely the best of both worlds.

We did this lesson months ago, but I'm just now getting around to uploading pictures and sharing them.  As you scroll through my students' creations, you will realize that some of them put much more effort into the assignment than others.

Detail: WWSDS: What Would Slope Dude Say?

0 A Prime Opportunity to Make a New Poster...

In case you were wondering, pun definitely intended.

I have so many ideas of how I would teach things/do things if life was ideal. And, by ideal, I mean I could pause time occasionally and get 100% caught up with my to do list.  I'm pretty sure I have no idea what it feels like to be caught up with one's list of things to do.  I still have things on my to do list that I put on there when I moved to Drumright in July of 2012.  It's now October of 2014.  I guess subscribing to the local newspaper isn't at the top of my list of priorities...

When I teach simplifying radicals, I teach my students to find the prime factorization of their radicand first.  Prime factorization is something that they should come to my classroom knowing, but I've found that many of my students need a short refresher course on prime and composite numbers.  I usually accomplish this by having my students classify the numbers between 1 and 100 as prime, composite, or neither.  We make a little chart to keep in our interactive notebooks.

 
When students are working on finding the prime factorization, I encourage them to keep their notebooks out and open to this page.  However, you know how that goes.  Students soon get where they just start assuming that a random number is prime instead of checking their chart.

Three years ago, I had this idea that I was going to make posters of the prime numbers to hang on the wall.  It never happened.  I taught radicals again.  And, again, I vowed to make posters.  At one point, I cut colored paper and assigned each student a prime number.  They were to decorate their paper with their prime number.  Then, I would laminate them and hang them up.  Silly me didn't think to specify to students how to orient their papers before writing on them.  Oops...

This year, I decided I was going to make this prime number poster thing happen.  But, I had a sort of dilemma.  The walls of my classroom are literally covered in posters.  Where could I hang the prime numbers?  Eventually, I decided that I had yet to utilize a small 4 inch gap between the bulletin board and the edge of the wall.  

I made a quick template in Microsoft Publisher that was 3 inches wide.  It didn't take long to duplicate the page and type in the prime numbers in a cute font.  This was made and printed in 7 minutes tops.  I gave one of my student aides the job of printing it on card stock, laminating it, cutting it out, and taping it to the wall.

The verdict?  Success.  Students are actually using the poster while working on their assignments or quizzes!  And, this makes this math teacher oh so happy.  

Want to download the files to print your own prime number banner poster?  Click here.

Detail: A Prime Opportunity to Make a New Poster...

0 Show and Tell

I miss the days of show and tell at school.  I honestly can't remember ever bringing anything for show and tell, though.  Surely I did.  Maybe I don't remember because I always brought boring stuff for show and tell.  Others would bring their pets.  I remember when one of my 2nd grade classmates brought her hermit crab to school.  Who can compete with that?!?  Anyhow, today I'm going to SHOW you some pictures that I took recently and TELL you about them.  Earth-shattering, right?  :)

Soon, you may be wondering, "Why is Sarah showing me all these random pictures and telling me about them?"  Well, this post is my attempt at procrastinating on my homework for my grad school class.  You're welcome.


The other day, a student stopped by my room after school to say hi/hangout until her mom arrived to pick her up.  She was in my Algebra 2 class last year.  When she asked me about my day, I said it was good.  She replied that "It's always a good day if you can do a math problem!"  When I told her that I needed a poster that said this, she made me one.  :)

She was also impressed by my Desmos t-shirt.  When I turned around to show her the back, she decided we should graph the equation to see if it really made a heart.  Not realizing the irony of her actions, she picked up a TI graphing calculator and started typing in the equation.  It didn't work.  I suggested that we graph the equation on Desmos instead.  It worked!

In other news, one of my trig students thought she would be cute and put "Jesus is the answer" on their special right triangles quiz.  It took me a few days to come up with a proper response.

Another good thing that happened?  I got 2 new free math posters in the mail!  I'm super excited to look into these curve stitching resources from AMS!

I learned what the word "bae" means.

Some of my students judged me for drinking out of a juice box.  #sorrynotsorry

We did a project in trig involving lids, paper, and pipe cleaners.  My kids took the leftover pipe cleaners and made things like diamond rings and handle bar mustaches.  Yes, I do teach high school...

The student who made the ring decided the ring needed a box.  Isn't her box lovely?

Another one of my students decided this is the tattoo I should get.  I'm not getting any tattoo EVER but especially not this one.

Want to get lots of questions?  Raid your kitchen of every circular lid you can find and place them on a desk at the front of the classroom.

Days when your odometer reading is a palindrome are the best.

My students have finally realized that I own quite a bit of mathematical jewelry.  When I don't wear something mathematical, I get questioned about it.  My sister got me this new necklace with three right angles on it.  Love it!

She also got me this circle necklace. :)

After talking about it for three years, my student council students finally got themselves organized and got t-shirts made up.  I took 18 students to our district student council meeting two weeks ago.  We looked very sharp wearing our matching t-shirts!

When your students beg to get out the red, yellow, and green cups, this sometimes happens.

My new Einstein poster came in the mail.  Yay.  It won't stay attached to the wall.  Boo.

Okay, I guess this is enough procrastination for now.  Back to finishing my homework assignment... :)

Detail: Show and Tell