27 Hands-On Trigonometry Activities

I created this hand-on exploration for my trigonometry students to explore the question “What is a Radian?”

This angle spinner for sketching angles in standard position is one of my favorite pages in our trigonometry interactive notebooks.

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.

This Trig Mini Poster Project gives students lots of practice with graphing trigonometric functions.

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.”

Make the unit circle memorable with this unit circle paper plate activity.

Help students practice converting between radians and degrees with a fun game of radians and degrees war.

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?”

This Leap Frog style game gives students much-needed practice evaluating trig functions using the unit circle.

I decided to create a Unit Circle Bingo Game to give my Pre-Calculus students some much-needed practice with evaluating trig functions using the unit circle. Technically, this is more of a game of connect 4 than bingo, but bingo just sounds more fun.

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. Check out the results!

This Trig Identities Challenge Activity will engage students and give them tons of practice rewriting trig expressions using trig identities.

Introduce the concept of trig identities with this hands-on trig identities matching activity.

Check out this trig ratios puzzle which I discovered on Open Middle and transformed into a printable puzzle for my students to tackle.

Use double angle identities to rewrite each expression and answer the joke of “Why was the mathematician late for work?”

I created these unit circle magnets to use with my dry erase magnetic unit circle from EAI Education. I plan to use the magnets both as a way to have a large unit circle on the wall of my classroom and for various activities throughout the year.

This radian arts and crafts activity is designed to help students conceptually understand what a radian is. As a bonus, it creates a beautiful, mathematical art display for your classroom.

A couple of years ago, I created this trigonometry puzzle to keep my students busy when we unexpectedly finished our lesson with more time to spare than I had planned. This trigonometry puzzle is really the Twisted Wires Puzzle by Cliff Pickover in disguise.

Several years ago, I created this deriving the unit circle foldable for my trigonometry students to work through and glue in their interactive notebooks.

I really like the simplicity of this One or Negative One? Trig Identities Task that I found in the 8th Edition of Demana and Waits’ Pre-Calculus Textbook (Section 5.1). That’s why I decided to turn it into a worksheet!

I created this odd one out activity to give my pre-calculus students extra practice identifying coterminal angles. In this activity, students were placed in groups of 4. Each group was given a set of four angle cards. They must work together to determine the Odd One Out.

I created The Great Quadrant Guessing Game several years ago to give my Pre-Calculus students some extra practice determining which quadrant of the coordinate plane was represented by two trigonometric facts.

Several years ago, I created this trigonometry calculator skills pop quiz to give to my Pre-Calculus students before we learn to use our calculators for evaluating trig functions. Students tend to think that these calculator-based problems are super easy and that they don’t need to be taught how to type trig functions into their calculator.

Several summers ago, I created a set of printable radian sectors to illustrate what different amounts of radians looked like when graphed in standard form.

I created this fun quadrants unlocked activity to give my pre-calculus students some much needed practice determining the signs of trig functions in various quadrants.

This parent graphs of trig functions clothespin matching activity has been in the making for multiple years. Students must match each statement with the appropriate parent functions.

I created this fill-in-the-blank unit circle chart for my pre-calculus classes to use as they practice constructing the unit circle from memory.

Sarah Newton shares a fun hook for introducing trig identities – a word ladder puzzle. I have tried this activity with my students, and they had so much fun!