This investigation takes a lot of time.
Day 1:
After going over the previous night’s homework, I spent a good deal of time going over how to use the calculator to get arrays of sequences into their calculator with a good number of examples. I tried to make sure that they understood the calculator’s method of working with the sets of numbers, particularly mentioning that you must think of each term in the set as a column for the Ans(1) or Ans(2) part. I did this by first putting data on the board in x, y, z, columns, then writing the rules using recursion. Then I added the columns in parentheses so that they were on the board as I was doing them on the computer’s calculator to be shown on the screen.
When it was time to make the tables from the investigation, which took the remainder of the period, many didn’t transfer the calculator exercise over. The students did okay turning the speeds from miles per hour to miles per minute, but the table confused them by going up by 1 to begin with, then up by 3, then by 5, then by 10s. They were writing the values as if the table was going up by 1 each time. Note: make extra copies of tables for next year! By the second time that I taught the lesson, I was much more careful about pointing this out.
Day 2:
I went over the table from the previous day (many were absent due to a student war protest (skipping, really)) which took awhile. I then had the students work on the graph and for some of them, answering the questions on the bottom of the page (steps 6 to 12). About 1/3 of them finished.
Day 3:
I was gone for a district meeting but had the students finish the questions from the investigation and work on 3.2 numbers 1-5, 7.
