December 2018
Squares and Square Roots
I was thinking about a way to make square roots more visual for my students. With graph paper, I started sketching out the perfect squares and then played with numbers that form rectangles rather than [...]
July 2015
Midpoint and Distance Formulas
The midpoint formula and the distance formula are introduced in algebra class. If students do not get a chance to discover how they are derived, they become yet another set of equations and processes to [...]
February 2015
What Americans Spend on Holidays
The National Retail Foundation sends out press releases that outline their predictions for consumer spending each holiday season. The 2007 - 2009 recession is quite evident in the dips in the charts of the predictions. [...]
How is Sports Illustrated Faring?
The release of the 2015 Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition often brings controversy of some sort. This year's inclusion of a plus-size model does not disappoint. Is it an about face that recognizes that women come in [...]
January 2015
Graphing Absolute Value
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXhADp-KPg8 When graphing the absolute value function, create a t-chart and list values for x. Then plug those values into the equation to find y. Be sure to treat the absolute value like a parenthesis [...]
Real World Absolute Value Functions
Absolute Value To understand how the absolute value can be applied to the real world, we'll look at two topics: What is considered normal with regard to the temperature of the human body and Fuel [...]
An Evolved Response to the Question “Why Do I Need to Learn Algebra”
I started my teaching career in a small school in Rosendale, MO. I was fresh out of college, married less than two months, and was tasked with finding a place for us to live where [...]