ONE

On Thursday, I’m going to be introducing absolute value inequalities. Last year I used the picture below as motivation.

I then tried to work backwards to show kids absolute value inequalities. It wasn’t too hot a success. Certainly the “application” wasn’t a motivator, and working backwards just confused things.

This year, I’ve decided to start with a warm up. Without them knowing anything, I’m going to ask them to do this for the first 7 minutes of class with their partners.

I already can see the great questioning and discussion that this simple worksheet will generate between partners. And then, when we come together: WHAM! powerful! It’s a simple thing, but Oh! So! Delicious!

After that, after we see some patterns and make some conclusions… then, then I can throw up the picture of the bag, and talk about it meaningfully. And have kids work backwards from their own conclusions to finding a way to express that region mathematically, using absolute value inequalities.

TWO

I’m introducing limits tomorrow. I pretty much have carte blanche in what I do. Last year what I did was sad. Like SAD. Like: “Here’s what a limit is. Get it?” This year, I’m stealing pretty much from CalcDave wholesale. Here’s his calculus questionairre. And here’s what I made.

Pretty much the same thing. Then I’d like to somehow have them start thinking about how to get velocity from a position versus time graph. Haven’t quite figured that out yet. Either that, or Zeno.