Domino's Pizza Linear Math Activity

Mathalicious has lots of great activities, but this one might be my favorite.

Here is the link: http://www.mathalicious.com/lessons/domino-effect

All I do as the teacher is give them this prompt:

Domino's pizza is delicious. The company is tech savvy, you can order online and even track your pizza delivery.  The website is great, but not transparent.  Domino's does not tell you how much the component pieces cost; they only tell you an item's final price after you build it. Your job is to find the base price of a pizza and find the cost per additional topping. You need to have enough information to do a 2 minute presentation to the class.




I don't grade the presentations, but look for slope, y-intercept, a graph, an equation, and an explanation of the graph.  It is a fun 30 minute project that fits at the end of the unit.

Video Game Success: Making Video Games with Math

Start with Pixel Press Floors

Pixel Press Floors allows you to create your own video game.  In our algebra and algebra 2 units we talk about lines and graphing lines for a solid part of our curriculum.  I wanted students to collaborate and have an ending project that brought a final bang to our unit.

This app allows you to draw on screen (in paper mode) and draw out the different levels of the game. There are a ton of lesson plans and tried and true ideas here: http://www.projectpixelpress.com/education

The Rules for the Project

• Student's need to create at least one level where they have an undefined, positive, negative, and zero slope.  They also need to have at least one other slope that is different from the rest (e.g. y=-3x instead of y=-x.)
• Student's level needs to be playable, you need to be able to get from beginning to end as a player of the game.
• The student's need to take a screen shot of their different levels to show their different slopes and use Desmos to graph each of the different slopes.

Here is an example level:

Students final examples should look something like this:

I want students to have a different final project.  Students will peer assess with others in the room.  Student's will need three other people to play their level and look over their paper they will have to write.  They will have a rubric to fill out about the playability of the game and the features of the game.

Financial Literacy in Math

Financial literacy is the ability to understand how money works in the world: how someone manages to earn or make it, how that person manages it, how he/she invests it, and how that person donates it to help others.

I believe that my past Algebra 2 students understand the material.  I don't think that they could go out and apply those concepts (for example in a job environment.)

Looking at exponential functions, for example, students can look at the depreciation of a new or their old car in terms of re-sale value.  Students can enter the data and draw a scatter plot on a sheet of graph paper.

If students didn't have a car they could search for one.  For example I searched my wife's car a 2015 Chevy Cruze.

The MSRP is $16,170

After the first year it depreciates: $7,904
After the second year: $1,200
After the third year: $1,000
After the fourth year: $875
After the fifth year: $675

Students could then plot this and look for the exponential line of best fit through that data on Desmos. You could then prompt follow up questions, what will the value be 8 years from now? Is $8,456 a good price now for a 2015 Chevy Cruze?

For slope and finding slope of a line, give them real-world data to extrapolate.  This data below came from the Nebraska Department of Roads.

What is the slope of each year from January to May?  What is the slope of each year from May to December?  What causes this?

What do you expect June to look like? Can we determine what the price will be December?

Having students know the concepts is one thing.  Having them use the concepts beyond the classroom is what we are looking for as math teacher.