Friday Five for April 22

The Friday Five is back after a brief hiatus during which it attended NCTM’s Annual Meeting in San Francisco. The Friday Five would like to thank all who came out and said “Hi” at the Desmos booth, or a Desmos session, and those who just followed along on Twitter.

Area v. Perimeter

What happens when you turn Dan Meyer loose with a Malcolm Swan task and a pocketful of Desmos tools? This short, delightful activity for Algebra 1 students and beyond.

Introduction to Limits

Calculus teachers, take heed! This activity from Elizabeth Pursel offers the limits practice you crave, then wraps up with the conceptual challenge you know your students need. Go forth and run it with your students!

Distributive Property

The Distributive Property and graphing go together like Nutella and….well…Nutella goes with just about everything, actually.

Now where were we?

Oh yes. Click on through to Jessica’s (no last name, evidently) Distributive Property activity for a new twist on an important idea.

Mean, Median, and Variability

Bob Lochel (and the Oxford comma!) returns to the Friday Five this week with a quick, snappy statistics activity for your classroom. Move the points around, make predictions about the effect on the data set’s mean, median, and variability. Class overlay in the dashboard is your friend in prompting student discussion of the possibilities.

Nine Points, Three Lines

Perhaps what you and your students need to relieve the testing pressure is a challenging little puzzle that also invites you to create your own challenges. If so, Christopher Kunkel has got you covered. Nine Points, Three Lines consists of exactly that on each screen. Mr. Kunkel provides the points—you provide the lines. Great linear equation writing practice combined with problem solving and opportunities for creativity.

So there it is, the Friday Five. Back in style and ready to finish out the school year. See you in a week!