Desmos Investigation

Remember this tweet? From November 6th? Gulp...two weeks...so sorry!

8th graders investigated slope and y-intercept using @Desmos. Great discussions! Blog post coming soon. #edtech #mathchat #celebratethegood
— Jessie Hester (@MrsHestersMath) November 7, 2013

Better late than never?? :) Right??

Background: We have been doing a lot tasks and investigations that form linear functions, the kiddos just don't know that's what they're called yet. They think we're just saving money, changing temperature, renting ATV's etc. They were catching on about constant rate of change and initial values, though, and we started writing equations and drawing graphs that represented our scenarios...

Then, I did this one day.

Students set up their interactive notes pages like this...

Then they paired up with a partner and got a laptop.

I gave each group the following directions:

Glorious and wonderful mathematical investigation followed...

We then debriefed as a class. 

The ideas of slope, y-intercept, slope-intercept form, horizontal lines, and vertical lines all came together wonderfully!! I even had at least one student in each class that remarked something similar to "I can't make a vertical line because it isn't a function, right?" Oh yes, dear child, you are right. 

Thank you for making this math teachers day!!!! :) 

What is your favorite use of Desmos so far???? Please share!