“Polly”nomial

I gave this “Polly”nomial task to my Algebra 2 students. The results did not disappoint. And, it made grading a somewhat boring assignment much more interesting!

A couple of months ago, my Algebra 2 students were working on polynomials. There was ~10 minutes left at the end of class, and they were in dire need of some good old-fashioned practice. So, I had them get out a sheet of notebook paper and work out the problems I was going to write on the dry erase board.

Except there was an issue. I got to number nine, and I had asked all the different types of questions that I wanted to. But to stop at nine questions seemed weird.

I had a split second to decide whether I was going to stop at an odd nine questions or if I was going to think of a tenth question on the fly.

I chose the latter. For question 10, I asked my students to draw a picture of “Polly”nomial. I didn’t elaborate.

I just threw the question up on the board to see how my students would take it. When students asked questions, I just shrugged my shoulders and told them that I wanted to see what they would come up with.