Adventures in Algebra I

This is my 17th year as a high school math teacher, and my 11th at my current school.  Before I came to this school, I had never been on a campus with freshmen (both of my prior schools were 10-12 campuses).  My first year here, I taught Algebra I and AP Calculus AB.  The next year I traded my Algebra I classes for Pre-AP Pre-Calculus classes and that's what I taught for the next nine years.  Late last year, my principal, informed asked me to teach Algebra I this year.  Algebra I is the only math class with an end of course exam in Texas, so he wanted to buck the tradition of the most senior teachers teaching the upper level classes while the newest teachers taught the lower level (and often more high stakes) classes.  So here I am, teaching Algebra I for only the second time in my career.  We have new standards, new curriculum, new textbooks, and all three of us teaching Algebra I have limited or no experience with the subject.
Since I got my Master's degree in Curriculum & Instruction last December and would eventually like to move out of the classroom and into an instructional support role, I am embracing this new challenge!  So expect to see a mix of Calculus and Algebra I resources on this blog.....
Today I'm going to share an Algebra I foldable I made and used today.  It gives a simple review of Integer Operations.  I gave it to my students to put in their interactive notebooks and then gave them 18 problems out of our new textbook to practice using the foldable.

Integer Operations Foldable
Integer Operations Assignment

I'm Baaaaaaack :)

Last year was a crazy year.  Finishing up my Master's Degree in Curriculum & Instruction took more of my time than I had anticipated, so my blog didn't get updated as I had planned for it to.  But hopefully this year will be a different story!  I enjoy the self-reflection that blogging provides, and I love sharing things with my fellow educators!  It's very cathartic!
I've had a change in my teaching assignment this year.  I'm still teaching AP Calculus, but I'm no longer teaching Pre-AP Pre-Calculus.  I'm now teaching Algebra I.  In Texas, students are required to take five End of Course exams in high school in order to graduate.  The only math EOC they must take is Algebra I.  My principal decided last year that he wanted the most experienced teachers in each department to teach those courses that have an EOC and I fit that bill :)  So here I am, starting my 17th year of teaching and I'll be teaching a course I've only taught one other time.  While I'm sad to no longer be teaching Pre-Calculus, I have to admit I'm excited about getting to mix things up and get out of my comfort zone a little bit!
I wanted to kick off my renewed blogging efforts by sharing a resource that a colleague of mine told me about and that I think will prove to be invaluable this year.  It's planbook.com.  It's an online lesson planning book.  It costs $12 a year and you can try it out for a month before you have to pay.  You can set up what components you want to have in your lesson plans, which is nice because we have to include vocabulary, an open and close, and our state standards in our lesson plans.  It's very easy to make changes by copying and pasting, deleting, or even shifting your lessons forward or backward a day as needed.  You can even share your lesson plans with administrators, parents and students using a link or you can even embed your lesson plans directly into your website!  How your lesson plan book looks and how much information you share are highly customizable.  Probably my favorite feature though is how easy it is to document and keep track of your standards.  National and state standards are embedded into the program.  All you have to do is select the standards you're using and then check the ones associated with your lesson that day.  The program even keeps track of how many times you teach each standard and on what days it was taught.  You can then print this list to a pdf document to share with a supervisor if you need to.  I definitely recommend checking it out!

#16

On Monday I'll start my 16th year of teaching.  Where has the time gone?!?  I honestly can't believe I'm that old!

I'm going to continue using Standards Based Grading and Interactive Notebooks this year.  I'm also going to get serious about my flipped class.  I kind of dropped the ball on it last year - I just took on too much and something had to give.  I'll finish my Master's degree on October 26th, so I'm hoping I'll be able to do a better job keeping up with the videos.  When I quit making the videos last year my students would ask if I was going to start back up again because they loved them!

I've been crazy busy this week with staff development and trying to finish up my classroom makeover, but I thought I'd go ahead and share a couple of things.

First off, my classroom!  It makes me so happy to walk in and see my chevron wall and cheery yellow paint.  And I finally had them replace my stinky dirty carpet with tile.

A close up of my desk

I'm going to spend the first few days of school setting up Interactive Notebooks and introducing my students to my TI Nspire calculators (I'll also be talking up my beloved Desmos).  Here is a basic calculator reference sheet I made for their notebooks.  I plan on making calculator guides like this anytime they learn how to do something new with them.

I really wanted to buy a set of radian protractors for my classroom, but I just can't spend the money on something that we really won't use for long.  Luckily inspiration hit and I came up with my own version printed on old transparencies (I mean who even uses an overhead projector anymore?!?).  When we first start talking about radians and I'm trying to get them to understand what a radian is and how it relates to degree measure I'm going to have them use these to measure and draw angles in both radians and degrees.  I'm pretty stoked about it!  I made a little pocket by sealing an envelope and cutting it in half.  They can store their protractor in the pocket.  It's just so cute!

Polynomials and Rational Functions

My polynomials and rational functions unit has passed me by and I didn't stop to post about it!  So here it all is in one post.

I started polynomials with the end behavior activity that I blogged about before.  After the activity, I gave them this foldable to summarize what they'd discovered:

End Behavior Foldable

The next day I gave them this to put in their notebook and we did this activity.

Zeroes and Multiplicity for INB

The next day we did this worksheet

Multiplicity Worksheet

We then took our first assessment over polynomials.  Up to this point, all of the polynomials we had worked with were already factored and had rational zeroes.  To prepare to work for polynomials that weren't factored and that had irrational or imaginary zeroes, we took a day to talk about synthetic division (something they have already done in Algebra II).  I gave them this for their notebook and we did a worksheet from Kuta over synthetic division.

Synthetic Division Handout

Next I gave them this to put in their notebook and we did a worksheet from my Nasco Joke Worksheet book:

Finding All Zeroes of a Polynomial

We then took our second assessment on polynomials.

Next up was Rational Functions.  Day 1 was a foldable and a little worksheet to practice using the foldable.

Rational Functions Foldable

Rational Functions Flower Activity

Our second day with rational functions found us doing this activity I got from Rebecka Peterson.  I <3 Desmos!
Rational functions day 3 was this matching activity I found on Teachers Pay Teachers.  Students worked in pairs to match up all of the cards.
Day 4 was this asymptotes sudoku puzzle, also from Teachers Pay Teachers.
Day 5 - Rational Functions Assessment

So there's a quick and dirty rundown of what's been going on in my class the last couple of weeks.  I REALLY like how I did this unit this year.  With the graphing technology available to students, I feel like things like Descartes Rule of Signs and the like are just outdated and unnecessarily confuse what should be a simple concept like the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra.  My students really seem to get that the number of zeroes a polynomial function has is determined by its degree.  They get how to determine end behavior and they get what effect the multiplicity of each zero will have on the graph.  Their first line of attack in finding zeroes is to use graphing technology and then they know they can use synthetic division and the quadratic formula if they can't get the whole picture just from their calculator.
Following polynomial functions with rational functions let them further see the value of being able to find zeroes of polynomials as the zeroes of the numerator and denominator are used to find holes, x-intercepts, and vertical asymptotes.  They were such pros at finding zeroes at this point that analyzing and graphing rational functions was a piece of cake!

Converting Polar Coordinates and Polar Graphing Foldables

Converting Polar Coordinates Foldable

Polar Coordinates WS

Polar Graphs Foldable

I got this worksheet from the Master Math Mentor website.  If you've never check it out, do it!  He has an entire Pre-Cal course complete with notes, assignments, quizzes, and tests and it's really good!

Polar Graphs Matching WS

Zombie Attack - Integration using U-Substitution

The fabulous Janelle Graham over at The Dog Days of Math posted this Zombie Attack power point game on her blog.  She was kind enough to e-mail it to me and I modified the questions to be about integration using u-substitution.  I'm so excited to try this out with my AP Calculus students today!

Zombie Attack - U-Substitution

Intro to Polar Coordinates

We first made this foldable and worked out the examples together.

Polar Coordinates Foldable

I then had them try figuring out a few coordinates in this Geogebra Activity.

Once they felt comfortable enough, I turned them loose to play Polar Coordinate Battleship with a partner.  I was shocked at the number of kids who had never played or even seen the board game battleship before, so we had to take a few minutes to explain the basics, but then they were off.   Calling out the coordinates was a slow go at first, but those who stuck with it quickly got much better at it.

Polar Coordinates Battleship