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).
Category: trigonometry
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.
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.