A few weeks ago, I had my best lesson of the year so far in pre-calculus as we were studying the 12 basic functions. My students were engaged like never before, and they became super competitive throughout the activity. They did way more questions than I ever would have been able to get them to …
Pre-Calculus
I created this set of 12 basic functions posters to accompany the 12 Basic Functions Challenge Activity for my Pre-Calculus Classes. I decided the posters deserve a page of their own so they can be more easily found and downloaded. Each one of these posters represented one of the 12 basic functions identified in our …
A promposal including a double angle identities worksheet? Read on for details! I’ve never really understood the big idea behind promposals. Part of that probably has to do with the fact that I never went to prom in high school. But, I recently got the chance to be a part of one, and it was …
After years of seeing other teachers share pictures of the unit circle projects their students created, I decided to finally take the plunge. I assigned my trig students the task of creating a visual representation (2d or 3d) of the unit circle in lieu of a semester test in trigonometry. A nice side effect of …
Thursday night, I tweeted about cutting and laminating cards for a leap frog game in trigonometry. I learned about the leap frog game at the OCTM (Oklahoma Council of Teachers of Mathematics) Summer 2016 Workshop. It was at a session titled, “Taking the Practice Out of the Worksheet.” Since, there’s a 99.9% chance you weren’t …
I created this finding trig functions through a point practice book to give my trigonometry students practice finding the sine, cosine, and tangent of a point on the coordinate plane. This put together so many of the concepts we had learned in this unit and the previous unit. It’s so exciting to see all of …
I had my students create this foldable to help them remember the signs of trig functions in each quadrant. We glued the resulting foldable in our trigonometry interactive notebooks. They were quick to ask how they should do this? I simply told them to pick a point in that quadrant and find the sine/cosine/tangent value. …
I created this reference angles foldable for my trigonometry students to glue in their interactive notebooks. The first image I gave students as a reference was from TutorVista.com. The second image I gave my students was from RegentsPrep.org. On the inside of this booklet foldable, I had students sketch the angles (given in both degrees …
After using our angle spinner to learn about sketching angles in standard position, we created these two sketching angles in standard position practice books to glue in our trigonometry interactive notebooks. We did the practice book for sketching angles in standard form with DEGREES first. I did this because students are most comfortable working with …
I love this clinometer activity for giving my trigonometry students extra practice finding missing angles and sides of right triangles. Plus, it answers the question of “When will we ever use this?” I printed a clinometer template off of VirtualMaths.org for them to use. I mistakenly assumed that they would be able to put together …
I created this finding missing angles of right triangles practice book for my trigonometry students to glue in their interactive notebooks. My students were a bit miffed that they had to just write these equations. They thought I should have given them a foldable for these! I did make them a practice book, though. These …
I created this angle of elevation and angle of depression interactive notebook page for my trigonometry students this year. I am trying to give my students word problems whenever possible on their quizzes. So many of the problems involve angle of elevation and angle of depression, so I printed an illustration from Varsity Tutors of …
We created this parts of a right triangle interactive notebook page to start off our unit on right triangle trigonometry. Each student had to cut a right triangle out of colored paper and glue it into their notebooks. We labeled one of the non-90 degree angles as theta. Then, we discussed how to identify the …
After making my Periodic Table War game, I had the brilliant idea that a Radians vs. Degrees game would be perfect for my trig students. After quick google search, I found out this idea was NOT original. I found a free file on TpT for Radian Degree War. I downloaded it, and it was …
SOH CAH TOA. The mnemonic device that sums up the majority of the population’s knowledge of right triangle trigonometry. Today I want to share a free download of a SOHCAHTOA Poster I made for my own classroom. Yesterday, I printed off a heap of posters and started laminating them. Earlier this summer, I had …
This post about the unit circle paper plate activity is more a reminder for me the next time I teach trig than anything else. I’m teaching statistics again next year, by the way. And, I’m doing INBs with my students instead of using the textbook like my first go at teaching stats. I’m super …
I used this evaluating trig functions square puzzle recently with my trigonometry students. We glued our completed puzzles in our interactive notebooks. This puzzle was created and shared by NCTM Illuminations under the name “Trigonometry Square.” While I liked the idea of this puzzle, my students struggled with the fact that there were too many …
I put together these finding trig ratios using the unit circle notes for my trigonometry students to write in their interactive notebooks. We completed these notes after gluing in a copy of the unit circle and a chart of trig ratios in the first quadrant.
My trigonometry students used our unit circles to fill out this trig ratios in the first quadrant chart. We glued the resulting chart in our interactive notebooks to reference throughout the rest of our unit. I edited the file to pre-type some of the information to make the note-taking process go smoother and faster in …
I titled this unit circle interactive notebook page “Our Trig BFF” since that is how I hope my trigonometry students will feel about the unit circle by the end of our unit. I’m not sure my students just realized how familiar they were going to become with the unit circle! In retrospect, I would have …
This is my first year teaching trig, so I’m figuring out a lot of things as I go. There is no textbook. No pacing guide. Just my own experiences with taking trig in high school to guide me. This is both exciting. And scary. My memories of high school trigonometry involve lots of graphing on …
I created this reference angles interactive notebook page for my trigonometry students. I stole the bowtie idea off of pinterest. Reference angles are always part of the “bowtie.” I’ve also reformatted this page of notes as a Reference Angles foldable. You can give your students some much-needed practice with reference angles using my Trigonometry Reference …
I created this coterminal angles card sort activity for my trigonometry students to complete and glue in their interactive notebooks. Students have to sort the angle cards into groups that are coterminal with one another. Then, they must take a blank square and write an additional angle that was coterminal with the other angles in …
This angle spinner for sketching angles in standard position is one of my favorite pages in our trigonometry interactive notebooks. I had students cut out the initial side and terminal side for their angle out of card stock. The initial side was glued down on the x-axis. The terminal side of the angle was attached …
I created this converting between radians and degrees foldable for my trigonometry students to glue in their interactive notebooks. This ended up being a much-referenced foldable! Outside of Radians to Degrees and Degrees to Radians Foldable: Inside of Foldable: Close up of radians to degrees notes/examples: Close up of degrees to radians notes/examples: Now that …