For my February-March teaching placement, I taught part of the Mathematical Models unit for the MAP4C (Foundations for college mathematics) class at a local high school. One of my favourite lessons was the introduction to quadratic functions, which incorporated the use of iPads, online graphing software, and an online collaborative sharing space called padlet.com.
I began with a short introductory lesson about the different parts of a parabola (axis of symmetry, roots, a-value...etc.) and how that is related to its equation. Then, I had students either find or take pictures of objects that resemble a parabola and model it with an equation on desmos.com. I followed up by asking students to answer a few basic equations: What is the equation of your parabola? What is something new you learned today?) and post their results on padlet. Some students found that objects they had chosen were modeled perfectly by a quadratic equation, while some were not. This shows that they can use their equations to make predictions (e.g. What will be the height of the building at distance x? When will the basketball hit the ground?). My associate and I noticed that there was a tendency for students to find pictures with concave down parabolas. As a follow-up to this activity, you can challenge students to see of they can find anything in nature or architecture that can be modeled by parabolas that are concave up.
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A Note from the Author
This blog documents some of the things I learned while I was in teacher's college at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario back in 2015. Many of the ideas presented here are taken from my classes, professors, and fellow students. I do not take personal credit for the work presented here. Categories
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