Categories
investigation tasks trigonometry

Problem(s) with Triangles

My provincial curriculum scatters trigonometry throughout several high school courses. Right-angled trig appears first as an isolated experience at the Grade 10 level. From there, the two pathways in Grade 11 cover the Sine and Cosine laws, but only one stream (Pre-calculus) continues into the idea of the unit circle and eventually the connections between the side ratios of right-angled triangles, the unit circle, the wave functions, and trigonometric identities. Since trig is doled out in piecemeal portions each semester, I often find that the hidden beauty of trig is masked by things like SOH CAH TOA. (Or, if you dare to place special triangles on the unit circle, SYR CXR TYX 1).

Categories
classroom structure discourse fractions integers numeracy trigonometry

Clothesline Series

I joined a middle years math community organized by my school division. I have a growing interest in the transition of students from middle school to high school because many of the tasks I use or create get at middle years content. I’m wondering what knowledge students come to my room with and what atmosphere it was learned in. Both have huge impacts on how students operate in my room.

I was surprised to hear that middle years teachers lamented that students could not use number lines. I use number lines as a support in my high school classes because I (ignorantly) assumed that this was an accessible tool from their elementary days. As it turns out, what I thought was making things easier for kids to conceptualize, probably was causing cold sweats and night terrors.

Categories
flipped classroom Khan Academy technology trigonometry vine

Ambiguous Case Vines

We all live in a consumer’s world, and we do an amazing job at acting entitled. These two factors have culminated in the invention of Vine–an app used to create six second, looping video clips.

Yet another way in which students can create, share, and network around media. Unfortunately, I feel like my students don’t often have an attention span longer than a Vine video.

Categories
PBL Pythagorean theorem similar triangles tasks trigonometry

Trigonometric Mini Golf

Christmas time brings immense stress for math teachers, at least in my division and province. As the days dwindle away, teachers begin to get a more accurate picture of how much they must cover before semester’s end. Once again, I found myself in this position with my Grade 10 Foundations and Pre-calculus class. (Saskatchewan Curriculum) My original plans called for 20 teaching days to adequately cover, in my opinion, the topics of trigonometry and systems of linear equations. Of course, by the time I sat down to calculate this I only had 11 remaining.
In previous years I would have panicked and switched into jam-packed lectures to “cover” all the content. This year I decided to re-think that approach. I wanted to find a project or anchor activity that could facilitate a wide swath of outcomes and motivate a high level of learning so close to holidays. I tried several creations, but settled on this one for its native curiosity and deep flexibility.