Factory Balls - composition of functions
When I think of composing functions, I think of the game Factory Balls by Bart Bonte because each decoration to the balls is like a function done to it. Most of my students were already familiar with this game, so engaging their brains with it before introducing a new concept helped them to make connections. I would prefer to use the actual game because most students are familiar with it, but on our district Internet, all websites featuring this game were blocked for "gaming," so I took the opportunity to use Google Slides to simulate two levels of the game. It worked! View the set writeup and try the game yourself!
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division ladders with pictures
A division ladder is an algorithm to help students understand how to find Greatest Common Factors. After our first day of practicing this skill, I noticed some students were struggling conceptually and I thought that maybe some pictures might help them. That night, I made up a picture demonstration to open with the next day, which also led into the new topic of the day: Least Common Multiple, which also uses the Division Ladder. One student said, "Huh. This gives me a new way of looking at it and makes sense."
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Distributive property with pictures
We had talked about the distributive property before in class, and the students remembered and understood it, but the next day we were going to talk about the FOIL method for multiplying binomials. I wanted the students to see where this comes from so they would have a baseline for understanding why it works and how to extend the concept to multiplying polynomials with more terms. They were somewhat reluctant to watch more pictures, but they followed along well. Later in the semester I was able to reference the "smiley face" representing an entire expression again and they knew what I was talking about.
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