Mile Markers Activity
I did the Mile Markers Activity this past Tuesday after teaching the graphing of absolute value functions and before teaching piece-wise function. This was the perfect placement of this activity. It reinforced the absolute value functions and gave students a real-life situation where it is portrayed. I then had the students think about writing a rule without absolute value symbols. Of course, they were insistent that it couldn't be done. When asked for their reasoning, it was because the same rule did not work for all mile marker values. It was an awesome opportunity to transition into the next topic and showed why piece-wise functions are needed.
Another example for piece-wise functions that I used with my students was working an hourly job full-time and the result when you work over-time. It helped them see the relevence of piece-wise functions, making my job of teaching this topic much easier this year.
I will definitley use this activity again!
Comment
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Comment by Barbara Assenmacher on January 23, 2011 at 5:35pm -
I hope we geta few more activities like this one in our last two sessions of the year.
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Comment by Claudia Heinrich on January 16, 2011 at 11:49am -
I also used the Mile Marker activity this year. I left the activity as part of my sub plans for the last session of Algebra 4 All. I was anxious to see how the students did on the activity without my help and was very pleased with their work. When I asked them about their understanding the next day they did tell me that the sub had to give them some help. Considering the fact that the sub was not a math teacher I still think it was a good introduction to the absolute value concept. When I had the students do the absolute value graphs they did very well and it was easy for them. I will definately use the activity again also!
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