#DESMOS GRAPHING POLAR EQUATIONS PLUS#

#DESMOS GRAPHING POLAR EQUATIONS PLUS#

Plus a few of them even had time at the end and chose to spend it playing with Desmos.

And they loved this! (or at least they told me they did and they were engaged and I didnвЂ™t hear any of the normal вЂњI canвЂ™t learn unless you teach me.вЂќ) AND they made a lot of the discoveries I wanted them to, some of them more formalized than others, but all of them on the right path. Now this class hates discovery learning with the force of a thousand suns. About 3/4 of them got through during the 50 minute class, with the rest having to finish up the last row for homework. The students worked in pairs in the computer lab and except for mention to a few of them that you can use the sliders instead of typing in each equation (I left off вЂњ like it says in the directionsвЂќ so I wouldnвЂ™t have to put a quarter in the sarcasm jar), I didnвЂ™t say anything to guide them. Here is the word file and the desmos file. My coteacher and I decided that my first draft was asking a bit too much (like the original lesson did), then I found this great worksheet and decided to base my lesson on that, using Desmos instead of the graphing calculator because DUH. I knew I wanted to use desmos and I knew I wanted them to make generalizations. Well, at least a better lesson than what was offered (which was вЂњgraph these 5 equations at the same time on the TI 83, come up with generalizations like вЂif |a|<|b| then r can be negative which forms an inner loopвЂ™, then forget what you just generalized and use a t-table to graph these.вЂќ) Plus IвЂ™m helping to write the PreAP curriculum guide so I wanted to make sure it was a good lesson.

Then our school decided to teach Calculus BC this year andвЂ“oops!вЂ“turns out that skill is kind of an important thing. While I did enjoy seeing where the petals and loops came from, we only got through 6 graphs and we didnвЂ™t really delve into recognizing the different equations and being able to do a quick sketch. Last year, we did some converting back and forth between polar and rectangular equations and then spent a day on graphing polar equations using t-tables. This week my PreAP Precal classes delved into polar coordinates and graphs.

Desmos graphing polar equations