All 3 of my classes have a quiz today. And with a half-day of school today due to parent conferences at the elementary level, there’s just no time for a class opener in any of my classes today.
Sorry….
But wait…there must be something I can share with you all! This week’s freshman class offered a number of great activities which provided much-needed practice, along with team building and class-vs-class trash talk. Â This week’s unit focused on functions: specifically, operations with functions , inverses and domain/range.
SPEED DATING WITH FUNCTIONS
To set up this activity, students ripped apart my classroom, moving desks into two long rows, with tables facing each other. Â Then, each student took a card, which offered an expression, such as “2x+5”, “x^2+2”, “-3x+1”. Â Students on one side of the table were assigned the role of f(x), while the other side of the table was g(x). Â This was written on the board at the end of the long table so students could remember.
Next, I held up a dry-erase board with a function operation. Â With their speed-dating partner, the pair completed the operation. Â Here are some sample tasks:
- Find (f+g)(x)
- Find f(g(x))
- Find (f/g)(x) and state any domain restrictions
- Find g(f(n+1))
- Find g(f(g( -2 )))
Partnerships reached an agreement on their answer, and I encouraged pairs to write down any problems which caused trouble so we could review them later. Â After each question, all student rose from their chairs, and moved one chair over in a clock-wise direction, which ensured that students worked with a host of different partners and functions. Â The entire activity took about 30 minutes, and was a fun review for our quiz today.
FUNCTION INVERSE MATCHING
A dash of creativity and preparation can turn a mundane worksheet into a classroom filled with action and sharing. Â In this activity, I created a worksheet (using Kuta software) of 25 linear functions, where students are asked to find the inverse. Â Giving all of these for students to do would not be the most thrilling task of their high school careers, yet we need some practice with identifying inverses. Â So, here’s what I did:
- Take the questions and their answers, cut them all apart, seprating question from answers. Â Place them in a baggie to store. Shake up the baggie.
- My students sit in groups, so each group was given a handful of the slips of paper.
- Project a stopwatch on the screen.
- Have the class select a class captain.
- When I say go (and start the stopwatch), the goal for the class is to match up all 25 functions with their inverses. Â I give no rules for how they need to organize this, other than that the problems need to be in order, as I have left the question numbers with the original problems.
- The class which completes the task quickest wins class snack.
This week, my morning class completed the task in over 12 minutes. My afternoon class was a bit more organized from the jump and took only 10. Â The teamwork and whole-class participation was exactly what I was looking for! Â The questions I used this week are given below. Â Enjoy!
mathcoachblog 