I found a lesson on the PBS Teacher’s website that incorporates many mathematical concepts just in time for Earth day! The lesson focuses on the linear modeling of population growth and decay. The guided approach to this lesson defines it as a Type 1 lesson.
The 6th grade students had just finished working on rates and ratios and a lot of fraction work, and had taken an image and increased it by a scale of 3. I was to teach them the next lesson that brought about the idea of different scale factors, and the relationship between the area and perimeter and how they are changed by the scale factor. Students were given what I thought to be a type 1 lesson. Here is the Student worksheet that I made for students to go through. We went through the first 3 shapes as a group.
The troubles I encountered:
Here is a lesson dealing with percentages and totals. It relates to fast food and calories which is very interesting. I think it could definitely be a good lesson to integrate with a health and fitness class. The technology is mostly Microsoft Office Software, however, it is very guided as you will see.
This activity on linear equations is very well guided. The teacher gives the students problems that increase in difficulty and includes directions along the way that point them in the right direction.
See my version of the finished product here
I found an interesting website that has numerous links for GeoGebra applets. Ellipse in a Box, Equation of an Ellipse and Pythagorean Theorem were the ones that stuck out in my mind as the most exciting. I would like to learn how to recreate the Pythagorean Theorem applet because I believe it is one of the most powerful theorems there are.
The three applets that I found that I liked were Boat in the River Current, Pythagorean Theorem, and Polar Coordinates. I would like to learn how to create the Pythagorean Theorem one with all of the different pieces that you can click and drag. I think that the approach this applet uses to prove the Pythagorean Theorem is one that students can grasp easily and I would love to know how to create it myself.
I found a website with a ton of good applets for a calculus classroom. 3 examples are the first one gives a demonstration of how the limit of sin(x)/x appraches 1 at x approaches 0, another one showing limits in general, and yet another the approximation of integrals.
http://www.ies.co.jp/math/java/calc/index.html
And an applet that I would love to see would be on series. Those were the hardest part of Calc II and I think if there could be an applet that’d be really helpful!
Through searching for interesting and educationally valuable applets, my search yielded the following results:
Here is a nice applet for visualizing angles formed by parallel lines and a transversal.
Need help seeing the dot product? This applet lets you visualize the dot product by moving to vectors. All the calculations are displayed on the right.
This applet is simple, though it is quite fascinating. In a mix of math and science, it allows one to perceive the powers of 10 in a “real life” example.
I haven’t found many applets that I didn’t like. I would, however, like to learn how to publish an applet and embed it into a classroom website.
The first applet I looked at was about angles at the center of a circle. I liked this because it helps demonstrate a lot of the geometry proofs about circles in a concrete way. I know I have a lot of problems with geometry and wrapping my head around some of the different theorems so this would be very helpful for me.
Working with the fractals in class the other day got me interested in them so I had to go look up cool fractals with geogebra. Here’s a fun one I found of a fractal tree. I think this is something fun you could do in class to see how creative your students are.
The last one I am going to show is a demonstration of continuity in functions for a calculus class. This is something I’d like to learn how to do and maybe elaborate on.