Many students are not quiet about their opinions of a typical math class, one where the teacher lectures, the students write notes and there’s time at the end to work on the homework. While there may be a need for this sometimes, this is not the most efficient way to get students engaged in the class and the lesson.
An easy way to mix things up and increase student engagement is by implementing an activity, other than a basic worksheet to complete. With all the technological advances occurring all around us, it’s important that we expose our students to some of these new technologies especially when they relate to math.
Students learn best and engage when the activity and topics can be related to their life or daily activities. This is where the “Crossover between Exercise and Mathematics” activity comes into play. Even if not all students enjoy exercise, they are all familiar with it because they are required to take a certain number of gym credits in high school.
In this activity students are to use a Vernier CBR 2 Motion Detector with a compatible TI graphing calculator, either a TI-83 or TI-84. The students will work in groups of three to complete this math exercise activity. They will have to come up with an exercise were they can measure distance and amount of time while they are performing it.
The students will take turns with each person performing the exercise, operating the equipment, and recording the information on their worksheet.
Once the students have decided on the exercise to perform they will make a prediction of what their graph of distance over time will look like. The distance will be graphed on the y-axis and the time on the x-axis.
Once their prediction graph is drawn they will use the Vernier CBR 2 motion detector and TI graphing calculators to create a graph of the exercise. After using the software and getting the graph, the students will record the graph onto their sheet and explain the differences between their graph and the graph done by the software. They can also explain which aspects of the exercise are visible in each part of the graph. For example, if the exercise is pushups then the graph would go up and down and the peaks would be when the person is in the fully extended position of the push-up. And the down of the pushup would be in the valley of the graph.
This activity relates to the following Common Cores State Standard:
CCSS.MATH.HSF.F-IF.4
For a function that models a relationship between two quantities, interpret key features of graphs and tables in terms of the quantities, and sketch graphs showing key features given a verbal description of the relationship. Key features include: intercepts; intervals where the function is increasing, decreasing, positive, or negative; relative maximums and minimums; symmetries; end behavior; and periodicity.