Day 21: Polynomial Savvy

Today in precalculus, we did a foldable on the key elements of polynomial graphing.  I revised one created by Rachel Rosales at Purple Pronto Pups blog.  We took about 10 minutes to fill it out, and added some details beyond my kiddo’s last year’s knowledge.

With the foldable in hand, I gave each group a 3rd or 4th degree polynomial to graph in 15 minutes.  I  had one student ask, ” are we going to be doing this a lot this year?”  I asked, “What do you mean?”  And the response was, “You know, make posters a lot.”  This was an awesome impromptu opportunity to talk about Making Thinking Visible with my students: that when learners speak, write, or draw their ideas, they deepen their cognition. Once again, got a chance to share my learning expectations for my students.

Love to see the “heads together” I was seeing with my students.  We’ll find out tomorrow if the activity helped coalesce the ideas for my kiddos.