In high school, math homework is essential to students’ progress and the consolidation of learning. But coming up with interesting new homework activities takes time and energy. To give you a hand, here are five ideas to help with your lesson planning.
A great way to help students understand and practice using graphs in statistics is to have them survey their friends and family members. After collecting data from 10 or 15 people, they can illustrate the results using the appropriate type of graph. Here are some survey topic suggestions:
To help students develop a more flexible approach to problem-solving, ask them to analyze the solutions to problems. For example, ask students to solve a problem in class. Next, give each student a copy of one of their classmates’ work and have them correct it at home. This will sharpen your students’ ability to spot mistakes and enable them to better understand why certain mistakes were made. This activity can also help them put their own mistakes into perspective.
Math is all around us. This may not be news to teachers, but students can sometimes struggle to see how what they learn in math class relates to their everyday life. One way to help open your students’ eyes is to ask them to take photos of the many ways in which math is present in our lives. In class, everyone can present their photos and explain the mathematical concepts they represent. Here are a few examples:
When studying curves and functions, understanding how parameters affect the shape of a graph is essential. On the Alloprof website, our concept sheet on the standard form of a function includes a graph animation that can be used to visualize the shape of a function in many different ways. For example, you can ask your students to experiment by selecting a function, using the sliding bars to change the parameters, observing how these changes transform the curve and its equation, and so on.
When you want to explain a concept in more detail, videos are the ultimate tool. We offer video tutorials called Crash Lessons, including several on high school math. Crash Lessons are structured in four parts with complementary educational objectives:
Our Crash Lesson on fractions (available in French only) makes for a terrific homework assignment, as it features practice exercises in addition to reviewing the concept.
Although our Crash Lessons are not yet available in English, we do have many math videos on our Alloprof in English Youtube channel that you can use with your students. You can easily embed one of our videos into a math lesson, or assign a video as homework and ask students to take notes. These can then be shared and reviewed in class the next day.
Writing : Alloprof Teacher's team