That's what I felt like today.
In precalculus, like all teachers, I want them to memorize and have a quick recall of (eventually all 6 functions and all 4 quadrants but for now...) sine/cosine/tangent of all special angles in the 1st 2 quadrants. I do timed quizzes where they have to get 100% or they get a 0% ... and they can take it as many times as they want.
I think the repetition is good for them. Also, I tell them, "hey! Make flashcards! Study!" we made a foldable (2 circles with a radius cut out and them sandwiching the other and the bottom is the unit circle with stuff around it).
Anyway, a student was waiting for a friend to do test corrections after school today, and she said, "hey ...", while she was fiddling with her iPhone. "Look what app I bought." She showed me the "unit circle app" that she bought for $0.99. You do something and a random graphical image of a reference triangle shows up on the unit circle and the sine and cosine values are shown.
Huh.
Dinosaurs, I'm telling you. Rawr.
I love your ideas in this post! I too am a precalculus teacher. To me is seems our district does not give enough time for the unit circle memorization. I do memorization quizzes, but will now incorporate the unlimited attempts. I think this memorization is so very important. The cut out unit circle activity is great, too. I love this blog!!!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Erin :) .... I also found that my current calculus students (who were my LAST year's precal students) STILL need the constant reminder of the special trig values. So I've been quizzing them, too.
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