Module 2 Written Assignment: Function Transformation Activity
Sarah Drake University of New England Course: EDU 600 Teacher as a Leader Instructor: Anne Lovejoy FUNCTION TRANSFORMATION ACTIVITY - 2 - Exemplar Lesson of Comparing and Classifying: My Pre-Calculus students are studying Functions and Function Transformations. I have spent the last few lessons presenting the students with the behavior, characteristics, and applications of the various parent functions we will be using in the course. For this lesson students will discover and create the rules of function transformations. Students have been broken up into groups of four. Each group has been provided with a copy of the activity (see Appendix) and colored pencils. Students will be graphing a parent function along with two or three versions of that parent function in a single coordinate plane. Students will then compare the similarities and differences of each change that occurred in the function with the corresponding change that occurred in the graph. Students will summarize, at the conclusion of the activity, how specific changes in the function affect changes in the appearance of the graph. For the remainder of the unit students will continue to transform functions using the rules they created and they will apply this knowledge to a new function that will be introduced in the next unit of study. This was the most successful student-centered lesson I have ever conducted with a class. The students internalized the information so well that when we got to the next unit they flawlessly applied the same function transformation rules to an entirely new family of functions. Dean et al. (2012) addresses some characteristics of the lesson that resulted in high knowledge retention and successful student learning: ! Students were working with familiar content during the activity because they were explicitly taught what each parent function was prior to the lesson; FUNCTION TRANSFORMATION ACTIVITY - 3 - ! Students were provided multiple opportunities to graphically demonstrate each type of change in the function; ! Students created nonlinguistic representations of the content which encourages students natural tendency for visual image processing (Dean, 2012, p. 64) ! Students had the opportunity to later apply and demonstrate this acquired knowledge in a new setting. The overall student response to this lesson was positive. They enjoyed creating color coordinated graphs and acknowledged the value in finding the similarities and differences between the functions. Since the base knowledge required to be successful in this activity had already been taught, students did not encounter any difficulties during the lesson. The expectations of the activity were clear and the collaboration aspect allowed students to monitor themselves and give each other feedback. From a teaching perspective, I should have required each student to make a more concise graphic organizer that included the final summary of the rules of function transformations. The way this lesson concluded was with a class discussion to summarize the rules and the three page activity packet as the reference document. Having the students create a finalized, single paged graphic organizer would be a valuable follow up assignment. FUNCTION TRANSFORMATION ACTIVITY - 4 - References Dean, C.B., Hubbell, E.R., Pitler, H., & Stone, B. (2012). Classroom Instruction that Works. Denver, CO: McREL. FUNCTION TRANSFORMATION ACTIVITY - 5 - Appendix