Category: Alg 2

  • How another country teaches the Quadratic Formula

    One of the most enjoyable thing I have done over my career is work with teachers from other countries. The university is a host site for the Fulbright Teacher Excellence and Achievement program which brings teachers from other countries to the US, where they spend six weeks in classrooms and university classes. As a teacher,…

  • No more broccoli flavored ice cream

    The struggle to understand why we teach K-12 mathematics in the order we do, and the content we do is real. I have wondered about this for a long time, and really have never found a good answer. I threw out the idea of teaching y=mx+b as the only way to write lines (even though…

  • (h,k) form – setting the stage

    I begin the class with a “what do you notice?” “what do you wonder?” session. This is probably the 5th or 6th day of class, and sets the stage for the entire rest of year. What do you notice? What do you wonder? I document all the noticings and wonderings, and then we discuss the…

  • 3 rules – extended & connected

    My last post was about the three rules I use in my classroom. I developed the how and why in that post. In this post, I will explore some detailed “how I use them” in the classroom. I am careful to never say the word “rule” except for these three. We have exponent shortcuts, log…

  • My 3 Rules of mathematics

    In Algebra 2, I start with my 3 rules. They really are not “my” rules they are just restatements of the multiplicative identity, additive identity and balancing equation. I believe how I use them to set the tone and stage for the entire year is different, however. On the second day of class (the first…

  • Summer blogging project – one maths

    I tried to do a 180 blog, and made it to 90. I really don’t know how people like Justin Aion and Sam Shah do it. It is very difficult to find something to day for 180 days without it sounding boring and forced. They pull it off though. That is amazing. Knowing I can’t…

  • Rational function rules

    Rational function rules

    Nothing annoys me more in teaching math than a bunch of rules to memorize, and rational function come with their own complete set of rules to memorize. I really find that annoying, and I have been on a personal quest to make sense of algebra through a combined set of understandings that will bring comprehension,…

  • Building & solving polynomials

    This post is a branch of yesterday’s post on polynomials. As were are teaching this year, I am giving them some tough, torturous problems that are about incorporating all the math from previous units into one problem each time. Yes, I want every problem to be a review of the previous year’s materials. And it…

  • Polynomials in Alg 2

    I haven’t posted in a while, mainly because I am just so happy with how my classes are going. I will focus on Alg 2 here, because these awesome learners are just knocking my socks off. I am in the polynomial unit, knee deep in graphing, and increasing, decreasing, relative mins, relative max’s, absolute mins,…

  • Greedy Greedy learners – a good thing

    That’s right, they got greedy, and lost. Well, everyone gained, knowledge and skills that is.  Today (and tomorrow in one period) in AP Stats we are playing The game of Greed. This is a great game, that challenges the learners in the end to make box plots and comparison statements about the created data. You end up…