Friday, March 11, 2016

Trig Stations with help from #MTBoS

I wish I didn't run out of time in class today.  It was going so well.

This is an Accelerated Algebra 2 class.  We have been learning right triangle trig with law of sines, cosines, bearings, and the unit circle.  We did a station review today to prepare for a quiz on Monday.  I loved making it with help from all over twitter, blogs, and #mtbos.  (Sometimes the hardest part about blogging is remembering who to give credit to.  I hope I get it right.)

Trig Stations

Thanks for Julie @jreulbach for the reminder about using stations in the first place.

Station 1: Trig Word Problems with QR code answers - Julia @jfinneyfrock told us on twitter that Snapchat is a QR code reader.  Cool!

Station 2: Radian clothesline.  I used my clothesline in Dec for logs and exponents, pulled it out today to put radians in order from 0 to 2pi.  Clothesline idea: Andrew writes about Clotheslines here with an idea from Chris Shore

Station 3: Angle vocabulary - Vertical Non-Permanent Whiteboards (idea from @AlexOverwijk and blog - (mine were permanent) get them up to the board drawing angles, reference angles, coterminal angles

Station 4: Unit Circle practice also VNPS at the board

Station 5: Law of Sines and Cosines applications with more QR codes

Station 6: Trig Match Up - a sorting activity from Shireen over at Math Teacher Mambo

I think the kids liked it.  They were moving around and asking questions.  Here are some pictures:









Go Trig!

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Make them NEED Bearings...

A quick blog post.  I taught bearings in Accelerated Algebra 2. They did bearings last year in Geometry and didn't really like it from the moans and groans when I announced it yesterday.  We are doing a unit on trig with Law of Sines and Cosines and bearings as well.  We do one day of bearings.  I wanted to see what they remembered as well as make them see bearings as necessary.  So, I opened with this: Edited to give credit to Dan Meyer for blog post.
I had one student close their eyes and the other could see this projected on the board.  They had to describe it so the student could draw it.  It was a struggle but there was some interesting conversation.  Some referred to quadrants.  Some used left and right.  Some used North, South, East, West.  Eventually, we pulled out from them a direction, a degree, and a distance.  Yeah!