Teach 180: Desmos Card Sort (Day 18)

It's still early in the year and we are continuing to review concepts in Calculus. Our lesson today focused on functions in general and for part of the lesson students worked in pairs on a Desmos Card Sort activity.  In this activity, students worked with a partner to sort equations into piles of linear and non-linear equations and tables into piles of linear and non-linear tables.

Most students had no difficulty identifying the equations as linear or non-linear.  Where there was some discussion between students was when they were sorting the tables.  Within each pair, it seemed like one student knew that the slope had to be constant (or the same) when looking at how y changed in relation to how x changed.   

Where many students need a little more work is on using mathematically precise language.  The response below shows an example of an answer to the two summary questions.  The questions were: 1) How can you determine if an equation is linear or non-linear? and 2) How can you determine if a table of values represents a linear or non-linear relationship?

I think we will begin class tomorrow by critiquing this response to the two summary questions.  I'll blog about how that went along with a different sorting activity tomorrow.