Thursday, February 10, 2011

Two Questions

I would like all of my 9th-graders (regular and honors) to be able to answer questions like these two by the end of the trig unit, with relative confidence:
* What is the difference between x=tan(5) and x=tan-1(5)? Draw a diagram to show me precisely what each statement means. Label appropriate side lengths and angles in each diagram.

* Evaluate tan(cos-1(5/11)) without a calculator. Show all work, and leave your answer in simplest fractional form.

If they could, I feel like I could be sure that they have a pretty good grasp of introductory trigonometry. The rest would just be icing on top of the cake! :) I did some quiz review with my honors kids today with that first problem, and they all thought it was really straight-forward. I was so happy!!

PS. Reporting from the front lines, the regular kiddies think regular trigonometry isn't so hard (and more or less did an entire assignment with algebraic and word problems in groups, with little help from me). They're ready to go outside tomorrow with their inclinometers!! YAY.

PPS. Some of my 9th-grade honors kids went wild for those "congruent halves" Geometry puzzles I had found yesterday. They were sneakily doing it today underneath their regular math work! How super cute!!

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