A word ladder is a
sequence of words formed by changing just one letter each time, it’s a fun word
puzzle invented by Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland. Doing
these puzzles in PreCalculus gives students an example of how something must be changed "one step at a time". In our next unit of
“AnalyticTrigonometry” we verify identities, where we change a trig identity one step at a time to
create a new identity. (word ladders we change words, one letter at a time.)
For example: changing
BACK to FIRE could look like this. One letter was changed at a time, each time
a new word was formed.
I personally find these quite challenging! (surprisingly maybe, I am a big reader). I like the ones that have clues to help me out.
But even with clues this one is difficult!
How do I incorporate these into my busy precalculus curriculum? Students get this packet after out unit test (today & tomorrow in my classes) and are asked to do at least two pages for homework. Some students get really hooked and complete the whole thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment