Algebra One Unit 7 Exponential Functions

Now we get into the fun stuff!  Applications....

I like to start off by considering a new type of function. A fun way to do this is with a skittles lab (or M&Ms) which I'll detail in my next blog post.

From there we define in a general way exponential functions and then compare linear and exponential functions. We look at the difference between growth & decay. Then we explore additional applications by looking at Half Life, Compounding Interest and Logistic Functions. Also we do some regression analysis of exponential data.

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on these now as my student teacher covered these topics in 2014-2015 school year. But I will do an update in spring 2016 after I teach it and tweak all my ISN inserts.

For now, here are the inserts my wonderful student teacher used.

 Regression Analysis pages:

first a reminder of how to use the graphing calculator

 then an example:

 Other Applications:

Space was limited in this foldable so next year I'm thinking of creating two two page foldables for these four topics.

Here are the ISN masters for these topics.

Here are some worksheets and lesson materials I used for these topics.

Dabbling in Parent Functions

Students at our school spend a lot more time dissecting parent functions in Algebra 2 and PreCalculus. But it's worthwhile to acknowledge now (in Algebra 1) that there is a whole treasure-trove of functions out there to play around with. My students look at seven different functions in our unit 3 (functions) primarily to get a sense of what's out there and to see what linear vs non-linear means/looks like. Then we move on to unit 4 and spend lots of time with linear functions. (while we are in that unit we also touch upon piece-wise and absolute value functions). Later in the year we work with exponential, logistic and quadratic functions.

Step One

Students work in their groups doing a little exploring on their graphing calculators with this instruction sheet. They get to practice describing domain & range with interval notation.

Step Two

We summarize what they found with our ISN pages. These are a double page spread without a separate "right page reflect" for each (there are examples embedded here in the "learning"). Recall from earlier blog entry that I usually don't use my ISN pages for initial "learning" - they are often for summarizing after students explore. This is an example of that.  All ISN documents are linked in headings below.

Linear Functions

Non-linear Functions (sorry the first image is blurry...)

and some additional ideas I gathered from the internet for possible future use or to help others?