Day 1:
Short day because of a late-start.
I gave a short introduction about recursion. I brought back “recursive rules” from fractals and told them that we will be writing recursive rules once again, although for sequences of numbers.
I did investigation 1 by having them draw the triangles in their notebook. I was sure to tell them that the perimeter of the figure is the distance around the shape and did not include the toothpicks in the interior. (But this didn’t stop some of them!) I had them fill out the table for step 2, and then used the calculator to do the routine. We then wrote how to correctly write out a recursive routine.
I then had them do the same steps for the toothpick squares.
I then did example B from the textbook on the board – I just put the sequences up on the board and let them go. Then they came up to the board to do them. Once again, I pointed out that every term was a previous term added to some constant number. I also made sure that the students put the recursive rules up on the board next to their lists.
In order to work backward, I then erased the lists of numbers of the board and left the rules up. Then I changed the number of the first term, so that there was a new rule up, and we wrote down the first five terms of the sequence.
I gave questions 1 – 4, and 6 for homework on this short day. Depending on how well they do at it, I may come back to this section, but from what I saw today, I’ll probably be done with it.
