‘Building Thinking Classrooms’ Tasks
These are some H.O.T. problems! (higher-order-thinking problems). This is one of my favorite sets of problems, going in increasing difficulty level. The last two pages are newer ones I added, hence the odd numbering. Students will perform basic operations on imaginary and complex numbers and also create their own complex numbers with open-ended questions.
This thin-sliced task has students progressing through basic matrix operations, to multiplying, to open-ended tasks that involve creating your own matrices. Problems increase in difficulty.
This set of problems has students practice finding a 2x2 inverse matrix by hand and then solve the system by hand using multiplication. All problems are around the same level of difficulty.
This set of tasks allows students to practice reading a scenario, defining variables, writing equations, writing a matrix equation, and solving it using the TI-84 graphing calculator. All problems are around the same level of difficulty.
This set of thin-slicing tasks has two main parts: Graphing and Applications. I love the graphing portion because it requires students to really think about the transformations and break an equation up into steps. The application problems are ideally done using a graphing calculator.
This set of 5 problems has students practice writing the equation of an exponential function given two points. One of the problems gives 4 different graphs with an obvious y-intercept, one of the problems requires Exponential Regression on a graphing calculator, two of the problems are real-world scenarios with various follow-up questions, and one of the problems is a fun simplification problem.
This set problems has students condensing up to three logarithmic expressions before solving. The earlier problems can be factored or solved as a basic linear equation, while the later problems require the quadratic formula.
Graphing logarithms has always been a weakness of my students, and they always need refreshers on shifting all types of functions. This activity combines both skills and has students use the inverse exponential function to get easy-to-plot points to shift.