Ways to introduce concepts and engage your students!
INTRODUCING VOLUMES OF REVOLUTION | DISC METHOD BY SLICING ORANGES!
Lesson Plan: Volumes of Revolution | Disc Method by Slicing Oranges
This hands-on activity builds your students’ conceptual understanding of finding volumes of revolution using disc method. By slicing an orange and computing the volume of each slice, students learn how the disc method works and what each part of the integral represents. Teaching your students with graphing software and 3-D images is helpful, but nothing beats holding an orange, slicing it up, and finding the volumes. This is a lesson your students will remember when looking back on your calculus class.
INTRODUCING VOLUMES OF REVOLUTION | WASHER METHOD BY SLICING BAGELS!
Lesson Plan: Volumes of Revolution | Washer Method by Slicing Bagels
This hands-on activity builds your students’ conceptual understanding of finding volumes of revolution using washer method. By slicing a bagel and computing the volume of each slice, students learn how the washer method works and what each part of the integral represents. Teaching your students with graphing software and 3-D images is helpful, but nothing beats holding a bagel, slicing it up, and finding the volumes. This is a lesson your students will remember when looking back on your calculus class.
CONTEXTS TO INTRODUCE LIMITS IN CALCULUS
Lesson Plan: Contexts for Teaching Limits in Calculus
Before teaching students how to find a limit on discontinuous, piecewise, and other complex graphs, first build your students’ understanding of a limit on a graph with a context they can talk about!
In this lesson, we explore 3 contexts:
• The changing body mass index of Miss America
• The human potential for average speed in the 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m and 1500m races, and
• The average speeds of horses in the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes
The “hook” videos include:
➢ Usain Bolt’s 100m races when he broke the World Record (3 times!). Each race you hear the excitement of the crowd and the announcers as they cannot believe the WR has been broken…yet again! Is it possible it can be broken again? Will humans continue to get faster and faster or is there a limit to our potential?
Video 1: UsainBolt 100m WR 1 Video 2: UsainBolt 100m WR 2 Video 3: UsainBolt 100m WR 3
➢ Secretariat’s record-breaking Kentucky Derby time of 1:59.40 in the 1 ¼ mile. This happened in 1973! American Pharoah recently won the Triple Crown (2015) as did Secretariat, but when will another horse break the record time?
Video: Secretariat – Kentucky Derby 1973