Juiced Up Special Angles!
I am lucky in that the teacher that has my students the year before my class is excellent! She teaches them Geometry then sends them to me for Algebra 2. So this year when I started our section on trig functions with special angles some of my students recognized the ratios they had memorized from the year before! I used this to my advantage when I introduced the unit circle. I created flow chart for 30-60-90, 45-45-90, and 60-30-90 triangles. The first column shows the side lengths they would recognize from Geometry. The second column shows the lengths (excluding x) with space to show the Sine, Cosine, Tangent. The third column is where I introduce the Unit Circle with a radius 1 and we do the work to change each hypotenuse accordingly. On the next page we plotted our coordinate pairs around the circle.
The students moved through the flow chart with ease. They understood the connection between each column and the placement around the unit circle! It was one of those moments when only the teacher knows what an advantage they are giving their students. The students just moved through lesson thinking creating the unit circle was breeze... wow.
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Introduction-to-the-Unit-Circle-2495564
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