EDCP 342A Unit planning

EDCP 342A Unit planning: Rationale and overview for planning a 3 to 4 week unit of work in secondary school mathematics

Your name:  Thrasher, Brendan
School, grade & course:  TBA through TEO – 12 – Pre-Calculus 

Topic of unit:  Trigonometry (I.B.-DP component optional)

Preplanning questions:

(1) Why do we teach this unit to secondary school students? Research and talk about the following: Why is this topic included in the curriculum? Why is it important that students learn it? What learning do you hope they will take with them from this? What is intrinsically interesting, useful, beautiful about this topic? (150 words) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Introducing how to graph the Sine, Cosine, and Tangent functions have always been a core component of Pre-Calculus 12 (or Principles of Math 12 as it formerly was called).  The topic, I would suppose for the first time in their school year, introduces students to “new” shapes – i.e. shapes that are periodic and “wavy”.  This is very important because of applications from physics, music, engineering, etc.  I hope they can learn how to relate the graphs of Sine and Cosine visually with each other (very important!), why the tangent function has asymptotes, what a phase shift/displacement is for one or more of these, and how with a real-life word problem they can combine all the tools taught to solve it.

(2) A mathematics project connected to this unit: Plan and describe a student mathematics project that will form part of this unit. Describe the topic, aims, process and timing, and what the students will be asked to produce, and how you will assess the project. (250 words) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Even though the question relates to only one particular project (I hope to have mini-projects trough this unit), I will give guidance through an interesting word problem on mapping sinusoidal functions, relating that with tidal wave patterns (high or low) Aims of this project: Have 5 students in a group, and 6 groups (presuming an enrollment of 30) Once they have been taught amplitude, phase shift, and transformations of SOHCAHTOA, they are ready to research a topic and create a (somewhat) realistic graph of a “life-like” problem. Timing:  2 class blocks Class 1/2 (beginning) Say:  “Well now that we’ve learned the behaviour of sinusoidal functions, how can we put this into practice?  Here are some suggested topics on the whiteboard, and I’d like each group to research a different one. Class 2/2 (mini-presentation) Say:  “In your groups, what topic did you research?  Let’s present.

(3) Assessment and evaluation: How will you build a fair and well-rounded assessment and evaluation plan for this unit? Include formative and summative, informal/ observational and more formal assessment modes. (100 words) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Class 1/2 I would walk around, and observe that each student has a contribution within their group discussion.  More often than not, one or two students will dominate the conversation, while the rest feel “left out” or simply disconnected from the topic. Class 2/2 When students present their topic, I have a rubric that assists me on their level of engagement within the activity Vigilant visual skills (from Opera) certainly help here when I monitor what each student contributes.  I would not expect “perfect” scores in all categories of assessment, but the overall grade/mark would be evident from my judgment.

Elements of your unit plan:

a)  Give a numbered list of the topics of the 10-12 lessons in this unit in the order you would teach them.

Lesson	Topic
1	Review of Right-angled-triangles & SOHCAHTOA
2	Converting degrees into radians and backward
3	Project I:  A spinning COUNTER clock! (how to measure radians)
4	Introduction to Sine & Cosine function graphs
5	Introduction to graphing the Tangent function
6	Project II:  “A tale of two graphs” (phase shift/displacement)
7	Introduction of inverse Sine & Cosine graphs (csc & sec)
8	Cotangent (cot) with rules of asymptotes
9	Word problems involving sinusoidal functions
10	Project III:  Create a sinusoidal function based on everyday situations
(11)	Identities in Trigonometry
(12)	Trigonometric proofs