Checked and updated annually, this page has ideas and resources for Valentine’s Day …
Valentine’s Day …
Category Graphs
Circles & Tangents
Desmos – Circles & Tangents
Use Desmos to explore tangents to circle through given point
Teaching Year 10 about the equation of a tangent to a circle at a given point I have created a Desmos page. I have also created a Diagnostic Questions Quiz using questions on circles (centre the origin) from Diagnostic Questions.
(pdf: quation of a Circle & Gradient of Tangent)
(Also added to GCSE New Content page)
Further Desmos Updates
An early introduction – plot some points and functions
Desmos – points & functions (for PowerPoint file)
Graphs-GCSE for PowerPoint file
Desmos Activity Builder
A superb new addition – Desmos have created an activity builder for teachers, this enables the creation of interactive Desmos-based classroom activities. A series of pages can be created – any combination of graphs, questions or text. Having created and saved the activity a code is then associated with that activity which your students enter at student.desmos.com.
A simple experiment for my first activity – identify the lines x=k and y=k.
Activities are very easy to create, the interface is intuitive; images can very easily be added by dragging them to the page.
Once students have tried the activity and submitted answers to any questions a teacher can see all their submitted responses. This is certainly something I will be using with my students in the coming academic year. I have various slideshows for Desmos which I can now create activities for. (For more on Desmos, see these pages).
Desmos & Valentines (& fractions and rotations!)
It’s that time of year again – save your money and send your loved ones (or anybody!) a math-o-gram!
Checked and updated annually, this page has ideas and resources for Valentine’s Day …
Valentine’s Day seems an appropriate time to express love for Desmos!
Two happy discoveries this week (thanks to Twitter):
Multiplying fractions and Rotation about a point. Brilliant.
Elsewhere – express your feelings for WolframAlpha!
and here’s a logic starter from Transum for Valentine’s Day!
Wishing Mathematicians everywhere a happy day and if you are a UK teacher about to start half term – have a lovely week!
Transformations with the Desmos Graphing Calculator
This week Year 10 (UK age 14-15) have been exploring different graph types and also transformations and graphs.
For homework I asked them to draw just a small number of graphs by hand but wanted them to check their work and explore further graphs using the Desmos graphing calculator. Early in the week I made sure they could all use Desmos including the use of tables so in an IT room they used the slideshow here and created several graphs of their own.
Once all the students were confident to use Desmos to create various lines and curves I asked them to explore a series of graphs so that this coming week we can discuss transformations and graphs. Using Desmos allowed them to explore many graphs in a short space of time and several students chose to take screenshots and make notes for themselves.
Desmos – simple transformations example
Having used sliders they were able to create this type of graph page.
I have created the slideshow below to use in class to summarise our work and act as a revision aid for them.
These slideshows are both available here for students.