This is a guest post from my friend Liz Wolf.
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“The conics section comes at a tough time in our curriculum. It’s a few weeks after Spring Break, and kids are always antsy in class and have major spring fever. I wanted a way to make conics less abstract and show the kids how often they come up in every day life. I came up with a project that not only got them outside, but also got them looking at things in a different way. The photo of the water droplet on the swing set was my favorite. The students really embraced this and I was impressed with how well they embraced GeoGebra having never used it before.”
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Below are some examples of final products from her class, and the instruction sheet she used.
Update: Liz sent me her Geogebra instruction sheet!
What a wonderful and creative way to get students to look for conic sections in the real world! Thanks for sharing! I’m going to highlight it in my blog http://www.watsonmath.com…a guest post from a guest post.
This looks like a great project! Would it be possible to also post the Geogebra instructions as well? Or point us to her class website?
Unfortunately she didn’t give that to me! But maybe she’ll see this and add it to the comments, if she feels comfortable sharing…
Okay, it’s uploaded for you!
Thank you!