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Friday, September 14, 2012

My Fav Friday - Graphing Cartoons

 

My Favorite Friday  - Graphing Cartoons.

I first got into blogging by finding a website named Dan Wekselgreene, named exponentialcurve.blogspot.com. I have no idea on how I found him, but I did and it changed me as a math teacher and wanted to make me express my ideas as well.

One of Dan's best activities, IMO, was a comic strip lesson he taught on graphing lines since his students were still struggling with it. You can find the lesson here Language and Retention of Math Concepts

He had his students draw comic strips to express the different ways to draw lines, when slope is zero, b is zero, negative slope, etc.....

I look his idea and used it in Algebra II class. I used it in my Exponential Graph Unit. My students have to sketch exponential and log graphs and transform them and many of them struggle with the transformations, well here come in the comic strips to the rescue.

I had my students take them and graph 1 exponential growth, decay, shift up or down, and 1 shift left or right. Here are some examples



I plan on using this idea more and more to help my students with graphing and transformations since it is still a part of the Common Core Curriculum.

3 comments:

druin said...

I also love ExponentialCurve. I miss his really awesome lesson ideas.

This lesson plan does more than just deal with content. It also addresses the CCSS literacy component, which is sorely needed in most classes.

T. Banks said...

I agree. Writing across the curriculum is often talked about but harder to achieve.

Anonymous said...

This is great! I've been trying to find some new review activities. I relied heavily on Trashketball last year which is (as you mention in another post) very time consuming on my end, but more importantly, in larger classrooms (like I have this year) it is too easy for kids to hide and check out.

This is so good because it can be done individually or in groups. It's still fun and they really need to know their topic. And if an admin walks by you score big by hitting the upper cognitive ends of Bloom's Taxonomy. Thanks for sharing!

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