If you're a middle school teacher, I'm sure you've been hearing "Six Seven!" nonstop this year!
We hadn't heard it in our algebra 2 class until about a month ago, when the 67 floodgates finally opened and now "67!" is an almost daily occurrence. It came up recently when solving x^2 - x = 42 (though this was on purpose).
As math teacher Ms. Campbell wrote, "Truth be told, it's the least offensive tiktok trend in years (at least for me!) And math teachers sure can have fun with it." Very true. And it's nice that math finally made it into a trend!
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| Six Seven Number Sort |
This SIX SEVEN real number system sorting activity has students sorting numbers made of up of sixes and sevens into whole numbers, integers, rational numbers and irrational numbers categories. The activity includes the sorting mat, 18 numbers to sort, and a key.
In this post, I want to share a few resources for teaching the discriminant as part of a Quadratic Formula unit.
This simple discriminant cheat sheet helps students make the connection between the value of the Quadratic Formula's discriminant and the number of real solutions the equation will have. It also shows examples of graphs with 1, 2, and 0 zeros and what the discriminant will look like in each case.
Do your students struggle finding domain and range of graphs? I made a couple printable domain and range tools to help our students this year.
There are directions pointing students to look at x for domain and y for range as they drag each tool across the graphs. There are also directions printed on the tool for what to record for domain and range when a graph has an arrow.
We have always used rulers to find where graphs start and stop, but I wanted something a bit more self-teaching for our students this year. The graph cards in the photo are a free download on my blog here.
You can find the domain and range finder tools here on my website.
I also made a new domain and range of graphs cheat sheet for our students that you can find here in my drive.
UPDATE: A 3rd tool for finding increasing/decreasing intervals of graphs has been added to the file linked below.
> Browse all domain and range activities
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| Domain & Range Finder Tools |
This past week, we started learning about imaginary numbers in algebra 2, which will lead into solving with the Quadratic Formula. I made this simple cheat sheet for the students so they can quickly check if a number is a perfect square and be reminded of how imaginary numbers work when simplifying and multiplying.
What's your favorite method for factoring quadratic trinomials? For me, it's the AC method with grouping because there's no guess and check, which frustrated me as a high school student. I remember endlessly erasing my work, and settling with "close enough" on some problems. The box, or area, method has grown on me over the years, especially how it links back to multiplying polynomials.
The structure of the AC method works for me, and is the method I have used most when teaching students to factor. I don't know when I learned it, but I remember thinking that it would have been a helpful tool for me in high school. If making the list of factors is difficult, students can divide AC with 2, 3, 4, ... with a calculator and write down any quotients without decimals, checking which factor pair adds to B.
I made a couple factoring quadratics cheat sheets and posted them on Facebook this week.
We're getting to factoring in a few weeks after imaginary number operations, Quadratic Formula and solving with square roots and we're going to teach the kids the box (area) method, which they may have seen in algebra 1. AC with grouping will be the backup plan for students who aren't clicking with the box method. Multiplication charts will also be available to students who need them.
If you are teaching factoring this year, I wanted to share the two cheat sheets above in case you find them helpful. I also wanted to mention that the cheat sheets I share are never intended to be standalone teaching tools. They always go along with lessons as a way to help students through independent work. This was something that came up this week, too.
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| algebra word wall box method posters |
A teacher recently requested box method factoring references be added to the algebra word wall, so I added these two posters.
> Browse all Quadratics activities
You can download the two factoring cheat sheets free here.
For practice, there's a free set of solve by factoring task cards here.
> Browse all free math cheat sheets
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| free math resource library |
