LessYakMoreMath

If you want your students to start the trigonometry unit with a deeper conceptual understanding this investigation is for you! This lesson goes to the heart trigonometry is all about. Ratios! Students are geared with solving the problem of "ranking" wooden beam angles from lowest to highest. Some students will sort the angles by drawing them to scale, others will be able to find the angle via dividing the opposite by the adjacent. Only some vocabulary introduced as needed, only one trig ratio

This investigation give students the opportunity to discover how standard deviation relates to normal distribution. Materials: Dice, access to books or white boards Teacher Moves: Students start investigation straight away, no instruction required. Students should have already learned about how to calculate standard deviation as a measure of spread. He students will discover that in normally distributed data sets, approximately 67% of the data lies within one standard deviation.

Students can discover the way in which numbers are broken up into their prime factors. Teacher Moves: Let the students start straight away to work collaboratively to decipher what the components of factors trees. Afterwards, students complete discussion questions to consolidate their conceptual understanding.

Students discover how binomial products are expanded, based upon the area model of multiplication. The task allows students collaboratively to extend their knowledge of distributive property in multiplication to algebraic binomials. Once students work out binomial expansion themselves they are challenged to create area models from quadratic trinomials (doing factorising without realising it!) No teacher instruction required. Less Yak. More Math.