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 squares. The video below shows the process. https://youtu.be/E4zlffv4zns Ideally, students would be introduced to this method in middle school [...]
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 memorize. The activity below gives students an opportunity to discover the formulas or re-discover them. The Pythagorean Theorem is sprinkled [...]
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. Some economists argue that due to unemployment and under-employment Americans have not yet fully recovered from the effects of the [...]
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 all shapes and sizes or an effort to boost revenue for a flailing industry? MPA The Association of Magazine Media publishes [...]
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 and perform the order of operations using it as a grouping symbol. Anything within the absolute value is performed first. Once [...]
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 economy of two vehicles: a Honda Odyssey and a Nissan Altima. http://youtu.be/4BaOWrzeOOM The absolute value of a number can [...]
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 my husband would be able to put his business administration degree to work. I walked into my first classroom hoping [...]
