Thanks to one of our county curriculum coordinators, I have discovered Desmos Activities. I have used the Desmos online graphing calculator for several years, but had never checked out the options for classroom activities. I must say, I wish I had done so sooner (no, Desmos is not paying me to advertise). There are quite a few pre-made activities to choose from; some made by the Desmos staff and some shared by teachers. There is also a feature that allows you to create and share your own activities.
I took advantage of the ability to create your own activities and made one for my Geometry kids to practice with the properties of parallelograms. Here are a few screen shots of my activity.
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| Multiple Select Question |
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| Free Response Question |
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| Card Sort |
I checked out a classroom set of Chromebooks from our Media Center (we are blessed with access to such technology) and did this as a classroom activity. My students enjoyed the variation in our routine, and I was able to see their work on my iPad and give feedback as they were working. I will definitely use this activity again.
I have set up another activity for my Honors Advanced Algebra students to investigate the graphs of cube root functions. We will do this after we return in January. Hopefully it goes as well as the one that I did with my Geometry classes in November. Here are a few screen shots from the Advanced Algebra activity.
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| Free Response - Students can view each others' answers |
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| Graph with sliders so students can investigate the impact of changing various parameters |
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| Students create their own graph |
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| Free Response - Answer viewable only by the teacher |
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| Multiple Select Question |
The links to my activities are below. Check out some of the other activities available also. There is lots out there!
