Unit Portfolio Presentation Margo Mercey

Unit Summary Algebra 2H students will explore the environment in which they live through geocaching, collaborating with peers, finding ones location through right triangles and/or sine or cosine graphs, spaghetti graphs, and student directed lessons using prior transformation knowledge to relate to sine and cosine graphs.

Curriculum-Framing Questions  Essential Question Where am I?  Unit Questions What tools can help me figure out my location?  Content Questions Why do you have to get more specific then degrees? (Introducing degrees, minutes, seconds) Where is the right triangle located? Can a sine or cosine graph be used to find my location?

Power of Angles This project will help Algebra 2H students to understand their environment through: Collaborating with peers. Geocaching. Using GPS devices to find locations throughout campus. Through the geocaching make conclusions. Research how GPSs find your location. Relate it to right triangles and sine or cosine graphs. Spaghetti graphs showing the relationship between the unit circle and the sine and cosine graphs on a Cartesian plane. Student directed lesson showing the relationship of prior transformation knowledge.

Gauging Student Needs Assessment Purpose of the Assessment To learn about degrees, minutes, and seconds and show the relationship between polar coordinates and Cartesian graphs. What I want to learn from the students? Have they used a GPS device? Form small groups with one person owning a GPS and one with knowledge of how to program coordinates using different measures. How do GPS devices work. Hands on learning through the spaghetti graphs. Applying prior knowledge of transformations to a new standard graph. How I have tried to promote higher-order thinking? I ask students to find the relationship of the GPS and how the waves travel through space to calculate their coordinates. How the assessment information helps me and my students plan for upcoming activities in the unit? If students have misconceptions about calculations, I can provide scaffolds. If students have different levels of understanding about transformations, I can provide various resources. We will revisit this assessment throughout the unit for students to add their knowledge What feedback or additional ideas I’d like?

My Goals for the Project Students learn about GPS devices, how they work, and relate it to trigonometry. More student directed instruction. Have a concrete knowledge about the relationship of the unit circle and the sine and cosine graph. Understand which one and why it starts at the origin.

Request for Feedback This feels very repetitive. Should I be restating ideas from page to page?