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Algebra 2 Class Notes v 0.2

UPDATE: version 0.3 of these notes are out now.

In my last post, I made available notes for the entire year of Algebra 2, following the Oklahoma standards. I mentioned that the notes are a work in progress. Hopefully in time for the new school year for most, here is an updated version.

Changes focus on the first six chapters, which should get anyone following the notes in order through the fall semester. I aim to have version 0.3, which will focus on fixes to the remaining chapters, done by Christmas.

Changes include:

  • Fixes to lots of errors and typos, both in the text and in the worked examples.
  • A number of paragraphs rewritten to be clearer.
  • A handful of additional examples.
  • Additional space for select examples.
  • Additional diagrams to explain concepts, including the picture below.

As before, there is a set of blank notes for students, and a set of the notes with all the blanks and examples completed. These notes remain free to use for teachers to distribute to their students in their own classes.

Download here:

 
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Algebra 2 Class Notes v. 0.1

UPDATE: version 0.3 of these notes are out now.

I’ve been working on a big project over summer: a set of student notes with fully worked examples for an entire year of Algebra 2.

You might be wondering why I did this. I’m not even teaching High School currently, as I’m taking a couple of years to attend grad school. While I’m doing some teaching, it’s been as a TA for Calculus 1, certainly not for Algebra 2. Even so, I’ve still spent a lot of time thinking about Algebra 2 curriculum over the past year, and had a lot of conversations about it with Sarah, as she is has been teaching Algebra 2 since last August. It turns out, even after taking some time away, my passion is still for high school math.

These are the ideas I’ve had for the function of these notes:

  • They’re aiming to meet the Oklahoma Academic Standards, though in places they step back to strengthen the conceptual foundation, and in others they go beyond the standards. Eventually I’ll produce an alignment document to explain all the links.
  • This is not a complete curriculum, but I see it functioning as a “skeleton” on which a complete curriculum could be built.
  • The notes focus almost purely on the mathematics, not on “real world” applications (with a few exceptions in statistics topics). This is not because these are unimportant; on the contrary, they are vital. But I believe these are better addressed using methods other that pre-prepared notes.
  • The intent is that the notes would be hole-punched and kept in a binder. This means if a teacher doesn’t like how I’ve done something, they can change it. Remove the parts you don’t like. If you don’t think there are enough examples, add more.
  • Teachers can incorporate the notes and examples as they wish into their lessons. While textbooks give they answers to examples away from the start, with fill-in-the-blanks, the teacher can choose at what point in the class discussion they make the correct answers known.

You might remember that I was working on a book of Algebra 2 practice questions. That’s still ongoing, but it’s been overtaken somewhat by these notes. But that’s okay, because I see these as two aspects of the same long-term project. Having the notes planned out should make planning questions a lot easier.

If all of this sounds good, here’s the great news: I’m going release the notes as I work on them. And while they’re still just a first draft at this point, that first draft is entirely done, and hopefully in a usable form for the upcoming school year.

Download them here:

 
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Quadratic Vertex Form Card Sort

Over the weekend, I needed a break from working on grad school assignments. At the same time, Sarah needed a card sort on the vertex form of quadratic functions. Being the nice husband I am, I thought I’d help. Being the nerd that I am, I did it in LaTeX.

This took a bit longer that I’d expected to create. I’ve a little experience creating graphs, so they weren’t too bad, but tables in LaTeX can be a little fiddly to get right. I also wouldn’t claim that took much thought went into choosing which functions to use. But, I’m pretty happy with the result.

You can download the files here. Included is the shuffled set of cards (pictured above), the cards sorted into the correct order, and a zip file of the original .tex files in case you want to modify them at all.

Edit (Oct 23): There were a couple of mistakes in the original version, it has been fixed now.

 
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Function, Expression, Equation Poster

The other day, Sarah showed me this tweet, and told me she wanted to make a poster based on it:

She wasn’t sure how she would do it. I tried suggesting an idea I had, but we decided it might be easier if I just made it and let Sarah see what she thought. Turns out that she loved it:

She did get it laminated today, and it looks like this:

What I love about this is the way it demonstrates the differences between functions, expressions and equations, but also shows how there’s a connection between them too. This poster goes well with the set Sarah created about solutions, roots, zeros and x-intercepts; that’s how she’s got them in her room, after all!

Now, the poster doesn’t capture all the particulars of these algebraic tools; it’s just a simple poster showing one example. There were some comments on twitter about the fact this poster doesn’t completely define what a function is, particularly absent a discussion of sets. Also, there was concern that the equation example implies all equations are homogeneous. Both criticisms have an element of truth, but also miss the point of a poster that, by its nature, only has one example. I think posters serve the best as either reminders of topics already discussed or starting points to launch a deeper discussion or investigation. Please, never put a poster on a wall and assume that means you’ve taught a topic. For an example of how I’ve discussed functions before, see these notes that I used in Algebra 2 last year.

Downloads are here.

This one may be a little tricky to put together, so if you want some guidance, keep reading:

  1. Choose your three colors. The effect works best (and helps communicate the idea) if the middle color appears to be a blend of the other two. If you don’t want to think too hard, just use blue-green-yellow like me, but I’d love to see other color combinations too.
  2. Print the first page (function) on the first color (blue, in my case), and the second page (equation) on the last color (yellow).
  3. Print either page on the middle color (green). For this page, you only need the expression rectangle, which appears on both pages. Cut off the rest of the paper.
  4. Stack your three pages with the expression rectangle of each page overlapping, with the middle color on top. Make sure you line up the rectangles as perfectly as you can.
 
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Diamond Problems

Continuing the theme of blogging I didn’t get around to last year, here are some diamond problems for INBs.

If you haven’t heard of these before, the solution to these puzzles consist of four numbers. The top number is the product of the left and right numbers, and the bottom number is the sum of the left and right numbers. The puzzle consists of the diamond with two numbers filled in; the task is to determine the other two numbers.

If the puzzle gives the left and right numbers, the solution is pretty simple. Even so, I provided some of these on the first page so students could understand the problem before moving on to the actual challenge: finding the left and right numbers when given the top and bottom.

You may have noticed that the solutions to these puzzles are related to quadratics. For instance, the first example matches the factorization x2 + 9x + 14 = (x + 2)(x + 7).  The magic of these puzzles is that they start teaching kids this vital skill for Algebra without it being obvious that’s what happening.

If you’re teaching middle school or even upper elementary school, I really recommend giving your students these puzzles. You can change the difficulty as you need, introducing negatives when students are ready, and decimals or fractions when you really want to up the challenge. The puzzle is a logical thinking problem which is not too difficult to understand, and ties directly in a skill needed in Algebra. As it happens, I used these in Algebra 2, because that’s what I was teaching, but I wish I’d known to use these puzzles when I used to teach 7th grade. Your students’ future Algebra teachers will love you for it.

Downloads are here, including blank versions for you to write in your own numbers.

There’s also a last-five-minutes activity I used a few times related to this. Once students know how the puzzles work, have a student invent their own puzzle and write it on the board for the rest of the class to solve. I had some (very competitive) students who were very determined to give their classmates a problem they couldn’t solve, and others who were equally determined to solve these problems.