Quadratic Functions Intro

We started our Quadratic Functions Unit last week, which is one of my favorite units to teach.  On Day 1 we started with a Brain Dump to see exactly what everyone remembered about Quadratics from Algebra 1.  Some classes were more successful than others at what they remembered, but in each class we were able to help others remember more than they thought they did.  I had each student start by writing down everything they remembered on a piece of paper.  After about 5 minutes I then had them all get up and go chat with 3 other students with the goal of adding 2 more items from their list for each student they chatted with in the hopes that they could each add at least six more items to their own list.

After returning to their desks, I then asked for volunteers to write one thing from their list on the white board, but they could not duplicate anything that was already written.  It had to be something new that was not already on the board.  This process lasted for another 5-10 minutes as they began remembering more as they saw what others were adding to the board.  I asked them to add anything to their paper that was not already there as we were filling up the board.  At the end of this activity my board looked like this.

We then moved on to talk about the attributes of quadratic functions and did a few examples together where we picked out the vertex, axis of symmetry, domain, range, maximum or minimum, and increasing and decreasing intervals.  Once we worked on a few together, I gave each group their own quadratic function to work with and had them put the information on their group white boards to display.

After all were done, we did a gallery walk around the room to check each other's work.