Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Radical Unit Planning

Maybe because I have an early case of spring fever ... after all it's 70+ degrees in February ...
or
Maybe because I have the winter doldrums ... don't the days between January and March seem very long ...
or
Maybe because it just isn't my favorite skill to practice ...
I'm struggling to pull together plans for our unit on Radicals ... but plans are coming together thanks to math bloggers!

In our unit we have to address inverse functions, transformations, writing radical expressions in various forms, solving equations, and applying the function to word problems ... pretty standard for each of the functions we examine.  Our district sets a timeline ... it's 6 class days, each class is 90 minutes!

Here's my plan so far ...

Day 1 Inverses
We did inverses early in September ... so this will be a review day emphasizing domain and range.
I plan to use a Desmos teacher created activity to facilitate conversations about inverses.  I'm using J Orr's What's the Point with minor modifications and S Carranza's Practice with Inverses - again with minor modifications.  Students will practice pencil/paper style to follow up with the online work ... filling in a table of functions, their inverses, and their respective domains/ranges.

Day 2 Attributes & Transformations
We will explore square root and cube root functions on this day - noting their attributes - comparing them to the functions we have already studied.  We'll also work on transformations using Desmos - again, borrowing from S Carranza's work, Transformations of Square Root and Cube Root Graphs.  I'm planning stations for class practice.

Day 3  Rational Exponents and Radicals
I don't have this day totally mapped out but I am excited to use K Belmonte's radical catchers in class!  I think the students will enjoy creating the foldables and make the practice a bit more interesting.  Speed dating is in the works as well!

Day 4 Solving
I'm planning for this day to be mostly practice.  I will provide a few examples, but I know students learn best when they do the work.  I'm looking at a scavenger hunt, a tic tac toe game, or a row game ... decisions!  All of the activities I'm considering we can do in pairs to promote math talk and peer coaching.

Day 5 Applications
I have a few good problems, well-constructed ones.  I'm thinking students will create posters to solve and explain their thinking.  I need more structure for this day for sure!

Day 6 Review
I'll use daily data to determine how best to organize this day.  We typically use games for about half the class period and paper/pencil review for the other half.

Tomorrow I'll create the outlines for each day ... goals, activities, and practice!  I'm almost there ... with a little help from my friends.

1 comment:

  1. I also feel the same redical while solving my problems specially it is a change in weather because it changes in the opposite direction and it is a quite hard time for all of us to take essay writing service to its perfection but I would like to thank my teachers who make it possible for all of us.

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