Introducing.....The Graphing Calculator!

Today in class, we used TI-84 graphing calculators. It was the first time that a majority of the students had seen or used a graphing calculator. I am happy to say that the students really enjoyed the activity, and they all caught on quite quickly. (Though I am not surprised - place any piece of technology in front of teenagers and they will have it figured out in seconds!) Since using the calculators seemed to help them grasp the material and improved their overall concept of Algebra, I plan to use them more frequently and would like to incorporate homework problems that they can use them on. The school does provide the calculators for our classroom, but as I mentioned in the beginning-of-the-year school supplies list, these calculators are suggested but not required. Now would be about the time that I would suggest these to be purchased. Now I am aware that graphing calculators are not cheap, and I would like to assist in any way I can. I would strongly suggest checking Amazon, eBay, or CraigsList (please utilize these at your discretion). There are also a few free online graphing calculators. This one, in particular, is my favorite - web calculator.

This being said, I believe that calculators are an essential part of learning mathematics. They are wonderful to use to supplement instruction and homework problems. I believe that calculators should be used to check work done, not to replace your child's brain. Your child worked very hard on every problem and concept learned up through eighth grade in order to get to high school. We do not want that knowledge to go to waste, do we?



The images above are what your child worked on today. The students already know how to solve the the equation in the box on the left to get the values in the middle box. They also know how to graph the equation like the image below. Using the calculators is a way for them to check their work to be sure that they are correct, and works well when dealing with functions that are difficult to graph - require large numbers, square roots, and values such as 'pi'.

I strongly encourage you to show these images to your child, and have him or her discuss the lesson we had today - it would be a great conversation starter! They can tell you about the story behind the function y = -16x^2+10.