“The best teachers are the ones who care about me.”
Math Mondays: Graphing exponential functions worksheet alternative
Wouldn’t it be great if every topic could be highly engaging? Or if you had time and creativity to “play” with topics? It would. In reality, time is scarce. Furthermore, and I hope it's not just me, some topics are just not that inspiring.
Math Mondays: Analytic Geometry in PreCalculus
Analytic geometry (a.k.a. conic sections) used to be my least favorite unit to teach. The formulas are dry and easy to mix up, it's hard to find real world applications where my students might need these equations (or how to find the directrix, vertex, etc.), and they almost seem like a side topic from all the other work we have been doing in PreCalculus. When I find a topic dull, I take it as a personal challenge to make it interesting to my students. Over the past two years, I have fallen in love with conic sections. Here's what I do to keep it interesting:
Math Mondays: Teaching Work, Motion and Mixture Problems in Algebra 2
As part of our rational functions unit in Algebra 2, we stumble on the troubling work, mixture and motion word problems. You know, if train a leaves at 1 and train b leaves at 3 and...or if one pipe fills a tub at a rate of 20 liters per minute and another pipe drains it at 12 liters per minute... my students groan when we get to these. Despite having worked with word problems and real world applications for years leading up to this topic, it is still a struggle for many students.
Math Mondays: Mini-Project for graphing radicals
Here’s a fun little project for graphing radicals that can be done by hand or on a graphing calculator such as Desmos. Students use square and cube roots to create a piece of art.
Math Mondays: Attention to detail
There is no question that deeper learning is the way to go, but reality sometimes warrants a need to pay attention to the details in problems. The reality of exams is that students are asked to evaluate and calculate. As math concepts become more complicated, the opportunity for "little mistakes" increases.
Math Mondays: Making the Most of the End of the Year
For some, the end of the school year is far off in the while others are preparing to close up their classroom in the next couple of weeks. Students are preparing for AP tests and finals. And, sometimes we are all just trying to squeeze everything in before the end of the year.