Sunday, September 14, 2008

Algebra 2: Rational Power Equations

Apparently, Tic Tac Toe Battle Royale works better with older students. In all of my classes, students got very into the game, despite the fact that there was no candy prize being offered (and only a couple of students even asked). The game was very noisy, but it was the noise of work and competition. I could tell, because each time I put up a new question, it got very quiet at first, and then the noise would build as they started discussing answers - and practicing psychological warfare on their opponents! When the noise reached a certain level, I knew it was time to show the answer. As soon as the answer was on the screen, there was much celebrating (or "aww, man!"), and then we moved quickly to the next problem. I highly recommend this as a review/practice activity.

In the next lesson, students will solve equations in the form ax^(m/n) + b = c. I wasn't going to do this originally, but I thought it would be a good way to reinforce all of the skills we've been working on up to now, set in the context of doing new and harder material.

After this, we will do a couple of lessons on absolute value and solving absolute value equations. Then, we'll move into logarithms. Yes, logarithms already. More on that soon.

Here are the files:

Lesson 8 (solving rational power equations)

Lesson 8 Keynote
Keynote Quicktime

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