Math by the Mountain

If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen the following tweet about a month ago.

You could say I got a bit behind on my semester 1 INB gluing and, as a result, my INB posts have fallen by the wayside.  Semester 1 ended the first week of February and I’m just now getting around to catching up on getting it organized, since I’ve had a few snow days in a row (I really thought this would be a snow-day free year, but nope!).

Without any further ado, here are my INB pages for Unit 4 of Algebra 1: Linear Functions. Note:  There were activity/quiz/review days built into this unit–the days listed out are for days that note-taking occurred.

Day 1

We started the unit off with what it means to be linear in form:

From there, we moved onto a foldable that covered finding intercepts of linear functions using various representations:

Then, we used our skills of finding intercepts to graph linear functions in standard form:

We finished up our class with a foldable, focusing deeper on horizontal and vertical lines and continuing to build off the last two examples in the chunk of notes before.  

Day 2:

We continued to expand our abilities with finding and now interpreting intercepts. 

We finished off the class by solving linear functions by graphing and introducing the idea of a “zero” and how it relates to an intercept. My students found it REALLY hard to not just algebraically solve these equations.  We talked a lot about why we are practicing solving by graphing for linear functions when the algebraic method is quicker.  We discussed that, because later on in the year, the algebraic method may become much more time consuming, and graphing can be a quicker method for many functions. We also mentioned that the graph allows us to see more of the story.

Day 3:

We started off with a recap warm up from the previous two days.  The boys in my class really loved problem 4. 

We then talked about slope and connected it back to the graphs we’ve made in the previous two days and how they either had a constant incline or constant decline…slope!

We looked closer at the different types of slope using this foldable from Lisa Davenport. 

Now that we had a bit of practice with calculating slope, we moved onto interpreting it and finding it from different representations. 

Day 4:

We started off with a recap warm-up of slope, and then learned about what proportionality means.

We extended our ability to determine whether or not a relationship is proportion to create equations. 

Day 5:

We started with a recap warm-up on writing equations for proportional & non-proportional linear relationships. 

We then did graphing absolute value equations by making tables.  This was mean to motivate students to use transformations instead of tables (we introduced transformations the next day), as well as help students remember the properties of absolute values and domain & range. 

I started drawing the absolute values in with marker because |3-4| started looking like 13-41 for many students.  

Lastly, we glued in a tips for success reference sheet that students can use if they ever get stuck. 

Day 6:

We started class with a recap warm-up on graphing absolute value equations by tables.  To further motivate transformations (we started to learn about them RIGHT after doing this warm-up), I made sure to make the second example REALLY annoying. Either you’d have to go up by 3’s or deal with the decimals.  At this point, I think we established that making the tables takes SOOOOOOO much work, but it does get the job done. 

Next, we were on the hunt for patterns.  What the heck do these a, h, and k things do, anyway?

Now that students had some observations, we applied it to make graphing SO much quicker!  It only takes 3 points, you know! Once you have the vertex and the slope, you’re golden!

Day 7:

We did a recap warm-up over graphing absolute value equations by transformations. 

Lastly, we glued in a flowchart reference page, just in case students ever needed an easy refresher of how to graph absolute value functions by the quicker transformation method.