PreCalculus Function Basics and the Graphing Calculator

The technology in our mathmatics classrooms are pretty much limited to graphing calculators. We can support our teaching with our LCD player and can occasionally use document cameras and computers (there is a computer lab with 24 computers used by computer science classes but open other blocks for other classes).

There is a lot you can do with graphing calculators. They are a big part of my precalculus curriculum.

Over the years students do regression work and systems of equations and other cool things. There is  a cool project I do with precalculus that involves piecewise functions and creating a picture on their calculator (although they can use a computer equivalent to do this).

A big use of graphing calculators in PreCalculus is to analyze functions.  In Algebra 2 students learned a half dozen or so parent functions and learned about extrema, zeros, & increasing/decreasing intervals. So I start our analysis by refreshing those skills and the use of graphing calculators.

After a warm up quadratic to analyze graphically, we go through a foldable that has little reminders and important things to remember in starting off this basic analysis.

Then students work through an example to apply all these skills.

My expectation is that they already know all this, we're just fine tuning and clearing up any misconceptions. 

And there are always a few students who feel very intimidated by their graphing calculators. So this helps them. I also refer them to my "graphing calculator handbook" that walks them through the whole process of each of this skills (with screen shots to help them visualize what to do). I post this on my school webpage for students to access.

All documents can be found HERE.