This week I spent in an inordinate amount of time working on materials for Geometry, but managed to work in some time for PreCalc as well. Early in the year we spend time going over the 12 Parent Functions. Students are then taught how to create new functions using the four basic operations, compositions, and transformations, as well as how to analyze these functions. One of the problems my students have previously had with these was remembering how the parent function behaved in order to determine how a transformation of that function would affect the domain, range, etc. In an effort to curb this problem, I am creating a card sort using the pages below.
My goal is to print the graphs, domain and range, etc on separate colors of cardstock. Students will not be given the entire set of cards at one time. Rather, they will be given the pieces as they are learned in class. I am scheduling time in class as these are covered to review the previous day's information, before adding new material. By the time the entire analysis is taught, the students will have practiced the sets enough times that they've memorized, or can quickly determine by sight, the analysis of each parent function. Hopefully, this will also improve their speed in analyzing transformed functions throughout the remainder of the year.
